



BB 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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GLEANINGS IN VARIOUS FIELDS OF THOUGHT. 

BY J. J. OWEN, 
fbitot San Jcoe (Cat) 9IU*oi**y. 



SAN JOSE 
TINQ AND PUBLISHING COMP 



IT 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, 
By .1. .1. OWEN, 

In tlie Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



TO ALL ASPIRING SOULS 

WHO WOULD 

ASCEND THE HEIGHTS OF KNOWLEDGE 

AND ATTUNE THEIR HEARTS 

TO NATURE'S DIVINER HARMONIES, 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME 

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 

BY THE AUTHOR. 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 



Introclu ;tcry 9 

Wait 11 

Human Sympathy 12 

Modest Doubters 14 

Misunderstood 16 

Freemasonry of Brains 17 

Contentment • 1° 

Inspiration of Good Deeds 20 

Unsolved Problems 21 

Companionship 24 

Unprofitable Scolding 26 

Better As It Is 28 

Our Young Men 30 

Crab-Apple Dignity 33 

Bending Before the Gale 35 

Religious Gambling 37 

Keep to the Right 40 

Self Dependence 42 

Don't 44 

Our Ancestors 45 

Piety of Fun 47 

What of the Night 48 

Anti-Marriage Resolution 50 

Value of Riches 51 

Act Well Your Part 53 

Passing On 54 

Calloused Sympathies 57 

What we Differ About 59 

Heroism in Common Life 61 

Philosophy of Life ^ 63 

Religion of Humanity . . . . ' 65 

What is Religion 67 

Truth Spoken in Jest 70 

Nature 72 

Work 74 

Agreeing to Disagree ^5 

A Spring Morning 77 

Our Spider 79 

Power of Love 80 

Materialism 82 

' T Don't Know" 84 

Old Age 86 

Something and Nothing 89 

Through Suffering 92 



Job's Query 95 

Not to be Wondered At 98 

After All 100 

Harmless Self Conceit 101 

Parental Government 103 

Sunset 106 

A Day of Rest 108 

Life's First Lessons 110 

"At Their Best" 112 

Gleanings 114 



POEMS. 



Night 121 

Cleopatra's Dream 123 

General Grant 125 

The Miner's Lot 126 

Night of the Soul 128 

Across the Bar 129 

Somewhere . 130 

To the Sierras LSI 

Dangers that Threaten 132 

Masonic Silver Wedding L>4 

Resignation 136 

My Island Home 137 



>XJR pWMBJiY ' IpJLLKS* 



-Er^^^-®^;— - 



IK1TK©BCCT©11Y, 



;E wish it distinctly understood that these 

■■ ] A,Ai} " talks" are from a secular standpoint wholly, 

||^ C T and are intended to he entirely free from 

dogmatism or assumption of any kind. We 

J, shall aim to impinge on no one's private belief — 

7 offend no one's conscience. There is a common 

ground upon which all right thinking people can meet 

and agree ; there are a thousand topics and themes 

affecting the welfare of humanity, concerning which 

no creeds can divide honest minds. It is in this vast 

field of thought we shall meet you, reader, as a friend 

and a neighbor, hoping you may find something in 

our "talks" to interest, if not instruct. 

We have analyzed closely the motives that govern 
human action — have thought much of the frailties and 
weaknesses of human nature, and sought to fathom 
their causes— have sought to determine why it is that 
one man preys upon, and another seeks the welfare of, 



OU<R SUNDAY- TALKS. 



society. Whatever conclusions — partial only at best — 
we may have reached, our researches into this mystic 
realm of causation — of moral forces — have taught us a 
lesson of charity for human imperfections, — a larger 
exercise of which in the world would, we believe, start 
the race a long way in the direction of that " good time 
coming," which has been the dream of the prophet and 
the inspiration of the poet, in all ages of the world. 

Goodness we find to be all one thing, whether prac- 
ticed by saint or sinner, pagan or Christian ; except that 
it is, perhaps, a higher virtue when practiced by one 
who counts on no reward therefor. And evil is the 
same in quality the world over, no matter what the 
belief or profession of the individual may be who prac- 
tices it. The measure of merit or demerit in the 
exercise of either, depends upon many circumstances. 
We have no right to expect apples of thorns nor figs of 
thistles. Neither should we expect too much of human 
thorns and thistles. We see that wrong abounds on 
every side, and it is as inscrutable to us as it is that 
death should lay its icy hand upon the young, or that 
the pestilence should walk in darkness ; or that the 
earthquake, the tornado, or the fierce lightnings, should 
desolate the homes of men. 

We believe that all reformatory- effort, to insure 
success, must contain the elements of a broad sympathy 
and a tender compassion for those whom it is intended 
to benefit. This is the secret of success in parental 
government, and it lies at the basis of all substantial 
elevation of the people of a state or nation. 

We know it is claimed that parents are responsible 
for the quality of character of their children. To some 
extent this is no doubt true, but that they are not 
wholly so is as true as that they are not entirely 



OUft SUNDAY TALKS. 



responsible for their own characters. The best of 
parents, often, have the most unruly children ; while 
children who are left to come up as best they may, 
often make grand and noble men and women. We are 
satisfied that the most effective of all parental discipline 
is the loving word spoken from a heart full of sym- 
pathy. If that will not keep the feet of the erring 
child from straying, nothing else will. 

Hence we conclude that in the exercise of charity 
and brotherly love lies the hope and salvation of the 

race. „♦«,»» 

Watt -Life has many puzzling problems-many that stagger 
reason, and leave the mind lost in a labyrinth of doubt We can 
not tell why it is that wrong is permitted to exist in the world- 
that the innocent should suffer for the wickedness of others-that 
nature in her operations should seemingly be so inharmonious 
and make so many blunders.-especially while we have as we are 
taught to believe, an all- wise and infinitely just Ruler at the helm 
of the Universe. We can not understand these things. No one 
can The least we can do is to wait patiently until we can obtain 
clearer views of life. Sometime and somewhere, we doubt not we 
shall be able to take in at a glance the whole long journey of ife 
from the cradle to the grave. Then we shall see, perhaps, in that 
clearer light, that what seemed to us wrong here was so only in 
seeming; and that at last, and in the eternal purposes of the 
Infinite, all is for the best. We can not judge of the year by a 
single day. nor of a human life by a single experience. We must 
see the first in its completeness, and live the other through al o 
its experiences, to judge correctly of either. Then when we feel 
it in our hearts to complain or rebel at our lot-at the hard con- 
ditions to which we are sometimes subject-would it not be well 
to wait a little while before we sum up the case and conclude that 
Nature is out of joint ? 

I F we troubled ourselves less about the affairs that do not 
concern us of our neighbors, we should have more time for self- 
improvement. 



OU<R SUNftA Y TALKS. 



^teanmcsaiw J^miWjptHtillJgl* 



strong enough to brave the contest alone. All 
2* need sympathy and help, and they must have it, 
'I' or sure disaster and defeat will overtake them. 

He who thinks himself strongest, when his life bark 
rides gaily before the breeze, with sails tilled with the 
winds of prosperity, is often the weakest of the weak 
when the storm and the tempest come. Thus in the 
hour of sorest trial many a weak woman has often been 
strong and brave to endure, where stalwart manhood 
has succumbed and drifted helpless and discouraged 
before the gale of adversity. 

Life is sweetened and made beautiful by sympathy. 
Its asperities are toned down and its rough places made 
smooth by the touch of a gentle hand and the tone of a 
loving voice. Even its severest trials may be endured 
and its heaviest burdens borne, when aided by a very 
little thoughtful and precious help of this kind. 

Suffering seems to be the common lot of all keen 
natures. The finer and more delicately strung the 
instrument the greater the liability to get out of tune, 
and when out of tune the harsher the discords. 

Some people are so evenly organized in their natures 
that scarcely any amount of trouble worries them. 
Their lives flow on smoothly and serenely, but never 
deeply. As they are incapable of great sorrow, so also 
are they dull to the rapture of great joy* Emotionless 
souls — calmly placid natures, — in the wonderful unfold- 
ments of human life, though they may be the wiser and 
happier, yet they can never be great natures. They 



OU'R S UNO AY TALKS. 13 

approximate too nearly the dull and insensate conditions 
of life that belong- to the earlier and lower developments 
of the race. 

It is only the most intense natures that live most — 
that get out of life its grandest, if not best results — its 
highest happiness, although not unmixed, often, with 
its keenest agonies. In order to fully and truly appre- 
ciate heaven it is necessary to know what hell is made of. 

All genius, whether in art or letters, belongs to this 
intense class. In the sanctum, forum, pulpit, — in 
poetry, painting, sculpture, song, — in all the higher 
ways of mentality, — though often erratic, and sometimes 
weak in certain elements of character, they nevertheless 
constitute the lightning strikers of the world. They 
are the men and women who mould public tastes, and 
shape the plastic thought of humanity into beautiful 
shapes. They often lead where they do not walk, and 
point out shining ways for other feet than their own to 
tread ; but they are none the less great in those attributes 
of soul and character that make them the heroes, 
instructors and saviors of the race. 

Such natures are but little understood by the great 
multitude, and they never can be fully understood in 
this life. Perhaps they will be better known and 
appreciated in the Beyond, when the masks and rubbish 
of earth shall be left behind, and the pure gem of soul 
shall find a better setting. 

Why it is that from souls capable of these great con- 
flicts — of struggles in fathomless depths of sorrow and 
transports on mountain heights of gladness — are mainly 
evolved the highest fruitions of heart and brain, is 
something we can not understand. We must wait till 
the veil shall be rent asunder, and then we shall see and 
know— perhaps. 



U<R SUNDAY TALKS. 



^f nciicIae-sKt Bpcmlbfjersec* 



KilmO the materialist the physical world is the all 
v " in all of the universe. He sees reality only 
|^T in those coarser forms of matter that appeal 
\[ to the physical senses. In fact he denies the 
existence of any and everything- that his senses 
can not grasp, forgetting that there may be 
keener senses than those of his < wn organism. "We use 
the term "coarser forms of matter," because to the 
undeveloped mind, those are the only forms that impinge 
upon the senses. But science is constantly unfolding 
new and imponderable forms of which the senses take 
no note. Tiaversing th.3 field of matter it enters a new 
and unexplored domain which seemingly lies outside the 
boundaries of matter. And here in a maze of subtle 
forces and foims, the unfolded mind is lost in wonder 
and reverence. 

It is not our purpose to attempt to clear up the mists 
that hover over the border laud of the physical. "We 
desire merely to suggest that we can know but very little 
of the matter at best. In the aggregation of atoms of 
which our densest solids are formed there is in reality 
no permanence or solidity. In the crucible— under the 
action of other elements— these solids disappear in impal- 
pable vapor, or enter into new forms. By an expansion 
of its internal heat, or that of the central orb around 
which it revolves, the ponderable globe itself might be 
resolved into the vaporous nebula whence it sprung. 
So, may it, not lie that whai we call matter is the mere 
expression of force —or rather force taking upon itself 



OU<R SUN'bAY TALKS. 



tangible shape ? That the things which seem to us the 
most tangible and real are in fact the most evanescent 
and unreal ; while the unchanging and everlasting belong 
exclusively to the domain of the imponderable; or as we 
prefer the term, the spiritual ? 

Therefore we should be modest in our denial or rejec- 
tion of what we do not know to be true. There b very 
little, comparatively, that we can know of anything save 
the simplest rudiments. Whoever dogmatically asserts 
that a thing is not so, because he does not know it to 
be so, simply advertises his ignorance to the world. 
And nowhere among men is this dogmatism more pro- 
nounced than among a certain class of ministers of 
the Gospel, who, while they claim to believe in the 
intelligent existence of the spirit of man after death, 
nevertheless deny all of the alleged phenomena relating 
thereto — j^ 1611011161111 to the reality of which many of 
the most eminent scientists the world has ever produced 
have borne and do now bear witness. 

The best and clearest thinkers are never dogmatic. 
They assert only after the most thorough investigation 
and irrefragible proof; and they always deny cautiously. 
They take nothing for granted that does not have the 
approval of reason. Whoever abandons reason casts 
overboard his compass and chart. True, the former 
may be deflected by natural bias, by false education, by 
various causes; and the latter may fail to indicate many 
a sunken reef and dangerous whirlpool, yet they are the 
best and really only guides we have — unless we choose 
to surrender all individuality and become puppets and 
pliant putty in the hands of other minds. It is better 
to walk and stumble than not to walk at all. 

The mind once awakened to the consciousness of the 



i6 OU'R SUN'bAY TALKS. 

fact that this life is not the all of existence ; that it is 
merely a primary school to a higher grade beyond; this 
conclusion reached, not as a matter of faith, which is 
often unreasoning - and blind, but of absolute knowledge, 
and life has a new meaning, beauty and grandeur, that 
the cold materialist never dreamed of. The soul, hungry 
for spiritual food, demands of the ministers of religion 
of every faith this knowledge, the absolute proof of the 
soul's immortality. It will not be put aside with an 
evasive answer. It says, Give us the proof or stop 
preaching the doctrine; — or at least stop denying the 
claim of those who think they know that "if a man die 
he shall live again." 

«—*-"*'2£ "f>?6*<^> -jw^r-* 

Misunderstood. — How few people are well understood, even 
by their most intimate friends. We think we know them, but 
there is a sense in which those we know best are strangers to us. 
There are chambers in every human soul into which not even 
the eyes of our best beloved are ever permitted to gaze — thoughts 
and emotions that none are ever allowed to share. We see 
where the tide breaks in crested billows upon the strand : we 
hear the fierce roar of the tempest : we note the angry glare of 
the red lightning as it leaps from cloud to cloud; but the vast 
unfathomed universe of soul lies beyond, an impenetrable pro- 
found, unapproached and unapproachable forever. 



He who would attain the truest happiness must forget self. 
and seek to lift the burdens from weary ladened souls, — scatter- 
ing the flowers of kindness and sympathy, and making light the 
hearts of those around. Then comes the joy and consciousness 
of having done some good to others, which brings the sweetest 
balm to our own hearts. And he who does most good to his 
fellow-man knows a bliss that the narrow, selfish man can never 
feel. 

Thk man who thinks in the groove marked out for him to think 
in, should have the manliness to get out of his groove long enough 
to respect the one who strikes out in new paths, and thinks for 
himself, even though the latter should think erroneously. 



0U<1< SUN'DAY TALKS. i 7 



Ijf Y&&tm&&^vtv$$ saf 5pirHi$«^£* 



_;.:;! jfT is related of those sweet, white-souled sisters, 

'^'sAb Alice and Phcebe Gary, that their pretty, modest 

'JO home, was the frequent resort of many of the 

I literati of New York City. Horaca Greeley, 

iPark Benjamin, Bayard Taylor, and other famous 
men of letters, often met at their cosy little tea 
parties; and we can well imagine the "flow of soul," 
the brilliant conversations, the sparkling wit, the inter- 
change of noble thought, and the flashing emanations 
of genius, that must have made those meetings .occa- 
sions of rare delight to each and all. 

Thus we find among cultured people generally, in 
their social relations, a larger freedom from conven- 
tional restraint, and a more profound contempt for the 
opinions of "Mrs. Grundy," than among those of shal- 
lower intellectual depths. They constitute a sort of 
Freemasonry of brains, a Guild of soul, the shibboleth 
to which can only be spoken with proper accent by 
those born to the purple. Conscious of the rectitude 
of their lives and the genuineness of their characters, 
they do not trouble themselves much about their repu- 
tation, for that they know often consists only of 
the breath of fools. Faithful to the divinity within 
their own souls they recognize the pure gold of character 
and the right royal stamp of intellectual and spiritual 
worth wherever they find them; and, if at all, they 
naturally seek for the friendship and companionship of 
their kind. Thus they are apt to be misunderstood by 
the thoughtless and superficial, especially when these 



18 OUfR SUNVjAY TALKS. 

pure intellectual friendships exist between those of 
opposite sexes outside the marital relations. As though 
intelligent people could not with propriety enjoy such 
friendships, and the refining attrition of mind with 
mind which follow therefrom, without subjecting them- 
selves to the censure of that prurient prude that 
sometimes goes by the name of Society. When will 
the world learn that the mind is sexless — that genius is 
a thing of the immortal spirit — that in the higher life of 
the soul there is " no marriage nor giving in marriage?" 



'■df ifin « t agr» t WrB3£r» to 

?NE of the chief studies of mankind in all ages 
has been how to obtain the most for the least, 
in other words, how to get the most money for 
the least labor; and the largest measure of hap- 
piness for the smallest amount of effort. This 
is a right principle; provided, that in getting 
the most we do not trespass on the rights of the least; 
and provided further, we make the right use of what we 
get. Upon these two points hinge all the ecpiities and 
virtues of the accumulation of wealth. 

One source of almost unlimited trouble in this world 
is in not knowing when we are well off. Our happiness 
depends too much on what we suppose others may 
think of us, and too little on what we really think of 
ourselves. We carry the spirit of rivalry and emulation 
to an extreme. In our efforts to excel our neighbors 
we often overdo the business and make ourselves mis- 
erable. 

Where is the early pioneer of any new country 
who will not tell you in his old age that life was sweeter 




OU(R S- UNI) AY TALKS. 



2 9 



to him, and his happiness more complete, away back in 
his log cabin days, when his neighbors, like himself, 
were all poor and struggling with the wilderness for 
the bare necessaries of life, than in his later years, in 
his palatial home, with his body Brussels, French cooks, 
bay windows, servants, rheumatism, pianos, and fash- 
ionable grown up daughters. Not but that a beautiful 
home with pleasant surroundings is of itself a source of 
pleasure to any refined nature; but to be conducive of 
true happiness to the possessor it must be the natural 
outgrowth of culture and refinement, rather than the 
creation of blind wealth to gratify a mean spirit of riv- 
alry or selfish vanity. It is the insatiate longing to excel 
— not in the gentle virtues of humanity, nor in the rich 
treasures of knowledge, but in mere temporal things 
that perish in a day — that play the mischief w T ith modern 
society. 

There was a time in the not distant past when for- 
tunes, except in rare instances, were acquired only by 
a lifetime of arduous and persistent struggle in some 
of the great industries of the world. Now, by the rise 
and fall of stocks fortunes come and go with the tide, 
leaving wrecks of humanity thickly strewn along the 
shores of time — for men are as often wrecked with 
riches as with their loss. Hence, it is no particular 
virtue, or even evidence of peculiar accpiisitive skill, in 
these days, to acquire wealth. Many of our rich men 
are monuments of meanness and moral obloquy. They 
live by driving hard bargains, by grinding two per cent 
a month out of poor men, and foreclosing mortgages on 
the homesteads of widows. There is no more milk of 
human kindness in their natures than there is fragrance 
in a toadstool. The joy of helping others is a sensation 
they never knew. Their hearts are a nest of spiders 
eternally on the search for flies. They pile up riches, 



jo U<k SU Jy 'It A Y 7 A LKS. 

and their avarice grows upon what it feeds, until each 
avenue of their souls becomes the hungry mouth of a 
cuttle fish, sucking -and absorbing from everything with 
which it comes in contact. When such men die it is a 
good thing for the world — perhaps. What such souls 
can find to do in the Land of Souls, — if there be any 
such place, — is something that no man can find out. 

How much better for all if all were better content 
with their lot, and learned to cease envying the fancied 
happiness and enjoyments of others. The flowers that 
blossom in our neighbor's garden — their fragrance and 
beauty are as much for us as for their owner. We have 
a fee simple in just as much sunshine and air as he. 
We own just as large a patch of God's blue sky — can 
number among our jewels just as many stars as our 
more wealthy neighbor. Yes, infinitely more than he, 
for we are less encumbered with those worldly cares 
that obscure the glorious vision of the soul, and shut 
out the heaven that unfolds its broad expanse all around 
the humblest of earth's children. 

<-*«^ • ^>>— << v • •&*"-*-* 
Inspieation of Good Deeds. — One of our noblest and pfurest- 
souled women writes: "I never read of a noble act that it does 
not inspire me to something higher. I never read and study 
meanness and hypocrisy that it does not fill me with B deeper 
loathing and despising for that which is low in life."' And so our 
acts, whether of good or evil, are made helps to the better life of 
all true souls. No one can live wholly for himself. His influence 
in some way reaches out and takes in ail humanity. If for good, 
then all are in some manner made better thereby. If for evil, 
then will it be wholly evil only to himself. All glory and honor 
to the man or woman who lives to inspire others to "something 
higher." 

The man or woman who gives expression to a thought calcu- 
lated to benefit or bless mankind, is deserving of honor in this 
world, and a place in the affections of angels. 



OU<k S UNO AY TALKS 



l^w^sonlvae^I ipjraonlk'tefnijsu 



Q^OCIETY has to deal with many unpleasant facts — 
,a3 facts of pauperism, hoodlumism, intemperance, 
*W insanity, theft, murder, unfaithfulness in office, 
J | ! marital inharmony, and unbounded rascality of all 
kinds. These are facts which no amount of preaching, 
or legislation, or civil restraint, seems potent enough to 
avert, or even to modify. They exist everywhere to 
curse the better portions of the race, and fill the woild 
with inharmony and tears. What to do with all of this 
diseased and disordered humanity— how to lick it into 
healthy and pleasant shapes — has been the puzzle of the 
ages. It is a problem that may well stagger the social 
scientist and philosopher of all times and climes. 

This disagreeable fact is one that there is no sort of 
use in scolding about; we must meet it, with all its 
unpleasant consecpiences, and we may as well be good 
natured about it as otherwise. It piles up huge burdens 
of taxes against the industrious and thrifty classes, 
which they may as well pay cheerfully as grudgingly; 
for fretting will not mend the matter, but rather sour 
the disposition and impair the digestion. We can't 
kill off these excrescences. Law and humanity would 
not permit of it: and so we do what we consider the 
next best thing; that is, we maintain an expensive 
judicial system, and build vast court houses, asylums 
and prisons for their punishment and confinement, and 
for our own protection. But this works no cure of 
the evil. It simply lops off some of the branches 
without removing the roots, and two new shoots spring 
forth where one existed before. 



•49 OU<k SUNDAY TALKS, 



We unhesitatingly assert, and challenge successful 
contradiction, that modern society, with its innovations 
in the matter of labor saving machinery, with its 
speculating tendencies, with its legislation favoring the 
accumulation of vast wealth in the hands of the greedy 
and strongly acquisitive few, is pauperizing and 
criminalizing the race at a rate unprecedented in the 
history of the world. Under this condition of things 
only the few can succeed, and the many, or a large 
and less acquisitively constituted portion thereof, must 
necessarily starve, steal or die. To tell the poor man, 
without a dollar in the world, and perhaps without the 
faculty for acquiring a dollar beyond his daily or 
immediate needs, that there are unoccupied Government 
lands in Texas, Arizona or Montana, inviting him to 
emigrate thither, is of about as much use as to assure 
him that there are good farming lands in the planet 
Saturn that he can have for the asking. What the 
average poor man wants is work for wages. Deprived 
of this he becomes an outcast, a tramp, and perhaps a 
criminal. It is the duty of society to furnish him with 
employment — not employment for to-day and none for 
to-morrow; but steady labor, at such remunerative 
wages as shall provide him with wholesome food, 
•comfortable clothing and proper shelter. But how ci a 
society do this with muscle everywhere supplemented by 
machinery ? The question is much more easily asked 
than answered. 

We have reached an era in our civilization that is new 
and startling — one that the political or social economist 
of even a quarter of a century ago never dreamed of. 
He never dreamed that the time would come in the 
history of our nation and race when brawn and sinew 
would be the drug in the market that it is to-day. He 



OU<k SUN 'DAY TALKS. 



*3 



never imagined that any element could so deranga the 
adjustment of labor to bread, as that .v>- witness to-day 
as the outcome of the uses of machinery in the industrial 
affairs of the world. The question to him is as new as 
it is momentous. It is one full of danger to society 
and the commonwealth. 

With these facts before us what is the duty of the 
hour ? In the first place the condition of the unem- 
ploy 'd classes calls for the exercise of a broad spirit of 
charity and humanity on the part of the affluent. It 
should suggest to the latter that there is clanger in 
the parsimony that permits of larje numbers of idle 
men in the community. They should not only, in a 
private capacity, endeavor to furnish employment to 
the unemployed; but they should conse it to the 
inauguration of public enterprises requiring many 
laborers. 

And yet all these are but makeshifts — temporary 
expedients — flags of truce, as it were, to enable society 
to gather wisdom and strength to grapple with its 
greatest ememy, over population. 

If any one should ask us why this article should be 
called a " Sunday " talk, any more than a " talk " for 
any other day of the week, we should answer. We 
don't know. 



He is not wise who counts himself poor simply because he 
possesses but a humble store of this world's goods; for what are 
houses and lands, and a few shining baubles of earth, to the vast 
treasures of the universe that are the common heritage of all 
aspiring 



He who strives and fails should never despair. He should look 
within and start anew take honor for his chart, courage for his 
compass, and the highest moral and mental culture for the point 
he would reach, — then there will be, there can be. "no such word 
as fail." 



OU<R SUNDAY TALKS. 



lacninmjJsajiriiosujeMrp* 



HE man or woman who can not rind sweet 

4 '^AJ; coni])anionship and profitable society in Ins or 

"^y^ her own soul is poorly qualified for companion- 

.11 ship with other souls. The miser who counts 

% over his treasures wants no companion to share 

/ the satisfaction he feels. He finds a sordid joy 

in solitude. The soul enriched with the treasures of 

knowledge, and the heart schooled in the virtues 

that ennoble and beautify human character, is never 

companionless. Its treasures are a well spring of 

never failing joy. It never wearies of conning them 

o'er and o'er. Time never hangs heavily on its hands. 

It is never lonesome, nor troubled with that haunting 

demon of empty brains, ennui 

Some good people of culture and large intelligence 
have an idea that it is necessary always to entertain 
their friends. We concede that such entertainment is 
expected and is actually necessary to the happiness of 
a large class of the human family; but we should pray 
for deliverance from all such friends. Not that we 
would be understood as intimating that in association 
we may not find true enjoyment, nor that the attrition 
of thought — of mind with mind — is not essential in 
bringing out sterling traits of character, and the finest 
intellectual qualities; but the idea we would convey is 
one of self-reliance. Make friends with yourself — fill 
the chambers of your soul with delightful companions, 
and no trouble can come to you, or losses befall you, 
that will leave yon wholly forsaken. Yon will then 



OU<k SUNDAY TALKS. 



?5 



have resources of enjoyment to fall back upon that 
no legal process can deprive you of— intellectual and 
spiritual treasures beyond the jurisdiction of the 
Courts — a bank account that can not be overdrawn. 

The emptiest thing in all this world is an empty soul; 
and whoever is content to sit down with folded hands 
in quiet indifference, amid all the unappropriated riches 
of the universe— the golden stores of thought— the 
unexplored caves of knowledge, — and live on and on 
in emptiness, satisfied with his spiritual and intellectual 
poverty, has no right to intrude his idleness and 
worthlessness upon the precious moments of men and 
women who have no time to waste. 

But whoever has an aspiration for better things — 
would seek to ascend the shining nights and realize the 
fruition that awaits his efforts — will never want for a 
helping hand to assist him on the way. All true souls 
are ever delighted to help and encourage others; but 
they should never be taxed to waste their strength on 
those who make no effort to help themselves. 

t ~**mn£ <§->S^$- /2/*v»-» 



Many people waste the best portion of their lives in worrying 
about what others may think and say about them; when if they 
would "let the world wag," and endeavor to live out, in their own 
lives, their best ideals of manhood, or womanhood, they would 
find themselves enjoying a far greater measure of happiness. 



He would be considered insane who should, without chart or 
compass, sail out upon the ocean, and, with no port in view, drift 
hither and thither upon the vast deep; and yet multitudes of souls 
float out upon the mystical sea of life as aimless and objectless — 
no star or beacon light to guide them o'er the dreary waste. 



lb OU<R SUNDAY TALKS. 



l^«:prCnfIt:.HiMb& HiaCCnMlM^- 



Jj\ |vT does no good to rail at the world — to blame and 

^LgA§ condemn everybody who does not exactly come 

X up to our idea of what they should be — who 

| does not think as we think, and could not by 

J. any possibility, unless possessed of exactly the 

J same shape and quality of brain, and had been 

born and reared under exactly the same conditions. 

The head might as well rail at the hand for any 

infirmity the latter may possess, or the hand find fault 

with the foot for like reason. We are all members of 

one social body, and common sense should teach us 

that scolding, or harsh measures of any sort only 

aggravate the evils that we seek to correct. 

When we have a broken limb we procure the services 
of a surgeon, the bones are carefully adjusted and held 
in place, and the wound tenderly nursed, until nature 
effects a cure. The limb is sometimes so badly injured 
that amputation is necessary to preserve the rest of the 
body. Society is instituted on very much the same 
principle as the human body. There are heads to do 
the thinking, shoulders to bear the burdens, hands to 
perform the labor and stomachs to consume the fruits 
of labor, — and the latter often Avithout giving an 
equivalent in return. 

Wrong doers exist everywhere. They are the broken 
limbs, the bunions and carbuncles, the goiter and fever 
sores, the torpid livers and stomach-aches of society. 
They can't all be amputated or dissected. If they 
could be, and were, there would be but precious little 



OUft SUNDAY TALKS. 



*7 



of the body left. It would be but a dismantled bulk, 
with some staunch timbers and sound planks, but the 
whole badly sprung and liable to fall in pieces. 

How best to cure the infirmities of society has been 
the problem of the ages. The regular doctors have had 
the patient in charge for nearly two thousand years, 
but with only indifferent success. It has been salivated, 
blistered and physicked until it has come to have a 
deep-seated disgust for all sorts of moral nostrums; 
and in some instances has taken to quackery with still 
worse results, or to no medicine at all, and perhaps 
died a natural and spiritual death. 

Now, what the world needs most is that better- 
knowledge which teaches the great principle of kindness 
as a rule of action in the treatment of the frailties, 
imperfections and moral infirmities of the race. The 
cure must commence with the individual and radiate 
outward like the warmth of the sunshine, or the glow and 
glory of a manly soul. It is man's truest and noblest 
mission to nurse the weak, reprove with gentleness the 
wayward, strengthen and encourage the faltering and 
console the sorrowing; and thereby, if possible, to leave 
the world better than he found it. If he succeed in 
making his own life sweet and unselfish he will have 
accomplished much. If he learn the laws of physical 
health and faithfully obey them, his simple example 
will lie a light to the path of others which will not be 
lost to the world; and if in the spirit of that broad 
humanity and charity that recognizes kinship in all, and 
sees good in all, he seeks the highest walfare of his 
brother man, — one such life will be worth more to the 
world than vast volumes of moral essays frigid with 
thought but barren of heart-throbs. 

Let us learn this lesson, that a selfish life is a mean 



life, and that the good we do to others reacts uj:>on 
ourselves in the formation and building - up of a 
character that will constitute the only wealth we can 
ever carry with us into the land of the Beyond. 



'*♦■*-»-*- 



ajfettejr ^k?gz If 1^ 



4 



^tTT|HERE are many people who are egotistical 

^sisb enough to imagine that if they had had the 

~^p^ making of the Universe they could have 

Jj, improved somewhat on the present job. They 

X would have had no conjunction of the planets, 

T nor great disturbances of Nature of any kind 

— no pestilence nor drought — no tidal waves nor 

tornadoes — no sickness nor sorrow — none of the ills or 

calamities that flesh is heir to. They would have made 

the earth ever fruitful, the elements ever propitious. 

and life ever fair and prosperous. 

But is it not probable that under such conditions 
humanity would have been about as tame and insipid as 
the life of a jelly fish ? As the thunder storm clears 
and purifies the atmosphere, as the furnace fires burn 
away the dross, so man's struggle with the elements is 
necessary to build up his individuality and round out his 
character. He must needs wrestle with the pestilence 
and the storm — with Summer's heat and Winter's cold 
— with health and life-destroying elements — with the 
hard conditions of existence that meet him at every 
turn. His struggles give him strength and vigor of 



U<R SUN O A Y TALKS. 



limb and soul, and enable him to walk erect where 
otherwise he would shrivel back into the primitive type 
of being whence he sprang. 

Man's business here is to deal with the Universe as 
he finds it, and to adjust himself to it in every possible 
way; not to quarrel with it. Nature takes no more 
thought of him as a physical being than she does of the 
reptile or the rock. Law is as merciless as the glacier. 
Upon its crest is safety — harmony. Beneath it, grinding 
atoms. Whoever violates the laws of health or being, 
intentionally or ignorantly, suffers — dies. He must 
bear the pain, until Nature, gentle mother, soothes the 
sufferer to rest. There is no vicarious atonement for 
matter. Though the mother love be never so strong it 
can not avert the mortal agony of the darling child. 

Nature everywhere and always commands implicit 
obedience to her laws. She will have it at any cost; 
and the sooner man learns this fact, and profits by it, 
the better will it be for him. He should learn a lesson 
of the reed, that bends before the storm; of the lichen, 
that anchors itself to the rock; of the flower, that lifts 
its head in the sunshine; of the bird, that carols among 
the branches; of the bat, that hides in the cave by day; 
of the laughter of children, and the heart-throbs of 
sorrow; of the earthquake and the lightning; of plenty 
and famine; of health and sickness; of birth and death. 
Nature will deal kindly with him if he will but obey 
her. She will gladden his life with blessings in a 
thousand ways. She will croon to him in the ripple of 
her brooks, and in the murmur of her ocean waves. 
She will fan him with her zephyrs ladened with the 
fragrance of many flowers. She will give him health 
of body and cheerfulness of soul. She will bend over 
him her loving skies all radiant with stars, and will 



30 OU<k SUN 'DAY TALKS. 

beckon him onward and upward to higher planes of 
being. 

The grandest thing in the Universe, of which we have 
any knowledge, is a noble soul, living to some noble 
end. This is Nature's crowning fruition — her rarest 
handiwork. To be noble and live nobly should be the 
aim and ambition of all. In such lives we behold the 
promise and prophecy of a yet to be glorious humanity. 



»«r ^30niw»g| B(f en* 



^IJfflpHE great curse of the age, with our young men, 

Tfllili is their persistent attempts to live a fifteen or 

~^p twenty dollars a week style of life on a ten or 

}{. twelve dollars income. The problem is just 

about as difficult of solution as that of the passage 

of two railroad trains in opposite directions over the 

same track. 

Now, while we fully appreciate the natural aversion 
that the average young man has to being lectured at, yet 
we apprehend that a few friendly hints and suggestions, 
offered in a spirit of sympathy for him and charity for 
his mistakes, will not be taken amiss. 

We fully understand the nature of the temptations 
with which our young men are constantly beset. 
Naturally sociable and disposed to be convivial, they 
find their enjoyment mainly in association. They meet 
upon the street corners, and at the saloons; they find a 
hundred avenues for their somewhat limited means. 
(We refer to clerks and mechanics who earn all the way 



from fifty to a hundred dollars a month.) They treat 
each other to cigars and beer, play billiards, euchre, 
and occasionally a game of draw poker, and thus they 
readily run through from five to ten dollars a night, 
perhaps more; and find themselves "dead broke" and 
in debt at the end of the week. 

By far the most deceptive and dangerous of all the 
vices to which our young men are exposed is that of 
gambling, for it carries with it nearly every other vice 
in the dark catalogue. Especially does it go hand in 
hand with drinking; and if persisted in, will as surely 
lead to ruin as the needle points to the pole. 

In every populous community there can be found a 
number of well-dressed, genial, hail fellows, who seem 
to have no fixed occupation. They spend their nights 
in manipulating the cards, and are up to all the tricks 
of their trade which come of skill and long practice. 
These men live mainly off our young mechanics and 
clerks, who foolishly imagine they can cope with them 
in their especial vocation. 

And then there is another class of young men, who 
manage somehow to dress well and hold up their heads 
in society, who attend all the sociables and parties, and 
are occasionally seen riding after a spanking team. 
"They toil not, neither do they spin." It is said of 
them that "They never miss a meal nor spend a cent." 
They are what Beecher would call a species of parasite . 
They live by borrowing. They meet our industrious 
young men at every turn. They know when pay day 
comes, the exact amount that each of their friends 
receives, and are promptly on hand to strike them for a 
" piece." 

Any young man who is in the habit of spending his 
evenings "up town," knows all about these, and various 



w 



OU<k SUNDAY TALKS. 



other kinds of parasites. He realizes that if his 
earnings were double what they are be would not be 
able to meet all the demands and drains made upon him. 

But what is he to do ? Would you deprive him of 
all social pleasure — of all enjoyment of friendly 
intercourse with his companions and fellows ? Not at 
all; we would.^elevate the standard and character of his 
enjoyments. Instead of his indulging in those practices 
which destroy health and debase the soul, we would 
inspire him with a taste for those enjoyments which 
ennoble the man — which add health and length of years 
—which adorn and beautify for time and eternity. 

See here, my boy, do you know the real enjoyment 
there is in a good book ? Are you familiar with our 
standard authors ? Have you read Dickens and 
Washington Irving? Has your mind ever caught the 
glow and glory that flash out from the works of those 
great thinkers of the age, Huxley, Lecky, Herbert 
Spencer, Tyndall, Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and 
others ? Do you know what real and unfading joy there 
is in the companionship of good books'? Compared 
with the soul-destroying pleasures of a night's carouse, 
they are as daylight to the murky night — the calm of a 
Spring morning to the dismal wail of the tempest- 
Suppose you "turn over a new leaf" for a while, and 
try it. Shake off some of the leeches that are sucking 
your life out. Provide yourself with some choice books 
and spend your evenings at home. Deposit five dollars 
of your weekly earnings in a savings bank. Try it for 
a year; and our word for it, at the end of that period, 
you will find yourself, in addition to the money saved, 
in possession of a stock of manhood, self-respect and 
general knowledge that will be worth to you a thousand 
times the effort it costs. 



OU<k SUNDAY TALKS. a 



^frsclb^Hiipiste ipigjarstti&i 



^ICjIOME people are got up on the crab-apple plan. 
^^3 They are so sour and puckery that no one cares 

fto pluck them. Whoever attempted it would be 
apt to prick his fingers with the thorns and 
wish he had not undertaken the jub. They seem to 
enjoy themselves most when they are most miserable. 
They are constantly on the look-out for slights and 
affronts, and live in a chronic condition of apprehensive- 
ness that somebody will say something about them 
they may not hear. They pride themselves on their 
bluntness, and glory in their angularities. They are 
the moral porcupines of society, whom it were better 
not to disturb, but to turn out for and pass on the 
other side. Such people little realize how much of the 
real enjoyments of life they miss — how much they 
withhold from their fellows. 

It surely pays to be affable, especially as it costs 
nothing. It requires no more effort of the vocal organs 
to speak kindly 'than unkindly, and generally not as 
much. We can scatter flowers or brambles in our 
pathway — sunshine or shade. Who would not greatly 
prefer the former to the latter ? 

Social and domestic life would be infinitely sweeter if 
people generally cultivated the suavities and tried to 
make themselves agreeable. Some people imagine they 
are dignified, when in fact they are only morose and 
cross-grained. They walk through life with the 
solemnity of an owl, surrounded by an atmosphere as 
crisp ami frosty as the breath of an iceberg. In the 



?4 OUfR SUNDAY TALKS. 

home circle, in social life, in the walks of business, their 
presence is enough to start the "goose pimples" upon 
the hack of every person with a sunny nature. Such 
people may have their uses in the world, but we have 
never been able to discover exactly wherein. 

Give us for companionship the man or woman with as 
little of that kind of dignity as possible — one that can 
romp with childhood— can laugh with those who laugh 
and weep with those who weep. Give us the man or 
woman with nature all radiant with the glow and 
gladness of a sympathetic humanity — one 'that never 
mistakes indigestion for religion, or a torpid liver foi- 
sobriety. There are, thank goodness, many such in the 
world. If there were not we should lose faith in the 
race, and believe no more in the law of human progress. 
The millennium would be but a wild fantasy of the 
imagination — a never-to-be realized dream. 

It is in the goodness, the nobility, of the few that we 
behold the prophecy of better things for all. Hence, 
we take courage and move on, content to labor and to 
wait — to plant the seed and bide the fruitage. 

Few people strive to do their best— none fully 
succeed. The heroism is in the striving. If all would 
try, the world would be the better for it. But some are 
so constituted that they have little or no disposition to 
try. What we want is a breed of humanity that has 
the deeply-rooted determination to climb to a better life 
and the grip to hold on. It will come some time, we 
believe, in the march of the ages. 



It is the duty of Society, as far as possible, to remove all 
temptation to a dissolute life from the reach of those who lack the 
moral firmness to resist its vitiating and seductive influence. 



SUNDAY TALKS. 
^ 



>.-> 



Ij&e«0I«ag$ Ijfef aenrar flfce f^fe. 



YlYHKKE are no hearts so brave or strong that do 

'^g?J^lr§ not at times quail before some great sorrow. 

?§p The shadow falls across their pathway when 

}[ they are least expecting it, or least prepared 

T for it, shutting out the bright sky and beautiful 

sunshine, and not even leaving one star to 

beckon them away to brighter realms. Suddenly 

spreads the pall of gloom over the soul, like the dark 

and remorseless hand of fate, and where so lately was 

heard the music and melody of the spheres — the 

laughter of children, the songs of birds and the sweet 

voice of love — is heard the wail of woe, or keen anguish 

riots in silence among the heartstrings. Death lays its 

icy finger upon the lips we love — the heart that nestled 

close to ours through the golden days of our lives is 

torn from our arms for aye — the voice that made sweet 

melody in our ears is heard no more — and th 3 agony, 

keen and pitiless, is upon vis like an avalanche ere we 

are aware. 

We say, these shadows come to all. They are incident 
to this mortal life. It could not well be otherwise in 
this earthly stage of existence. Men may preach till 
the "crack of doom" the philosophies that should 
reconcile us to these great overwhelming sorrows. 
Such preaching is always for others, not for ourselves. 
When our own hearts are riven — when the arrow pierces 
our own soids — we must enter the Gethsemane of 
anguish alone. There is none to bear our burdens, 



tf 0L7(k SUN 'DAY TALKS. 



no more than there was to bear the burdens of Him, 
the man of Sorrows, in that agonizing struggle wherein 
we are told He "sweat great drops of Moo;!." 

But Nature, gentle mother, although seemingly cruel 
as the grave, is nevertheless tender and kind. Over 
the field of carnage and death, where shot and shell 
plow their way through struggling masses of living 
men, and the earth is vent and torn, and made ghastly 
with the mangled slain; the dews aud the gentle rains 
descend like a benediction, and over all the balm of the 
sunshine, like the smile of God, sheds its sweet baptism, 
and erelong the grasses and the wild flowers come with 
their soft and beautiful vestments to hide the cruel 
scars of war. So with the stricken heart. In time the 
fury of the storm is spent; the tempest and the 
whirlwind of emotion are lulled to sleep, and rest and 
peace, with their mild and gentle solace, come with 
angel fingers to bind up the bruised heart and calm 
the troubled soul. 

These are the experiences of life that come to all. 
They are the experiences that seem most necessary to 
discipline the soul and fit it for that higher plane of life 
and usefulness, towards which all progressed and 
progressive humanity is tending. 

The lesson we would draw from this theme is, that 
while we can not avert these apparently dire events in 
our lives, we should school our natures to accept them 
as a part of the training and discipline we need, and 
without which we should be but poorly qualified for 
those higher spiritual and intellectual enjoyments to 
which, whether ever to be realized or not, every true 
soul should aspire. We should learn to feel that they 
are the refining fires that burn away the dross and 
coarseness of our natures — that they are stepping-stones, 






if lightly used, to a high 
and feeling - . 



and purer plane of though 



Ijjfterlsjggi o m&z Qtam lbtTi«gs$< 



; . /1^:LL rightly organized society is ever in a chronic 
''I^A^kl condition of civil war. where the clashing of 
''Tiffi* moral forces may be heard on every hand. Ti is 
j[ thus only that the good is made to dominate 
% the evil. Otherwise society would be a 
] neglected garden, choked with rank and 
noisome weeds, where the flowers of beauty and 
harmony, and the fruits of all ennobling virtues, would 
find but a pinched and stunted growth. In this great 
conflict of forces there arc arrayed on one side the 
promoters of all human welfare— the friends and 
conservators of all that elevates man in the scale of 
moral, spiritual and intellectual being. On the other 
are the enemies of man's truest happiness — and their 
name is legion — who are ever at work seeking to drag 
him down nearer and Dearer to the primal types of 
being whence it is supposed he sprang. The tiger of 
the Indian jungle is not more ferocious and merciless 
than are some human tigers who fatten on the blood of 
innocent souls, and who leave mourning and desolation 
in their track. 

In this contest for the right there is always work and 
room for all. The Press, the Church, the School, are 
usually, and ever should be, the mighty Columbiads, 
thundering t lie -rand lessons of life from the ramparts 
of society. And whoever gives a cup of water to a 



thirsty traveler, or speaks a kind and helping word to a 
fellow being in distress, is a private soldier in the same 
grand cause. And this is the conflict of the ages — the 
warfare of the evermore. 

All of which is preliminary to a few thoughts, 
pertinent or otherwise, to a general subject that has 
awakened no little interest in every community, which 
subject may be expressed in the form of a question, thus: 
Is gambling for religious purposes ever justifiable ? In 
no other State in the Union are the inducements and 
temptations to acquire something for nothing as great 
as they are in California. Gold and silver mining is in 
itself but little better than a game of chance. It was 
so in the early days of placer mining, and is more so 
now in the davs of quartz mining;. But that bears no 
comparison with the wild speculative mania for stock 
gambling. The miner puts in his labor, and if he won 
the golden prize it was but the legitimate fruits of that 
labor. The stock gambler invests in his business no 
honest toil, but makes his money upon his ability to 
outlie somebody else. This mad passion for speculation 
is sapping the very foundations of society. It is 
wrecking the peace and happiness of multitudes. 

But this is but one manifestation of the gambling 
spirit. It has other and darker phases — vortexes into 
which our young men are plunging, and where they 
will be engulfed forevermore. 

With this peril at our doors — a vice as insidious as 
the malaria that feeds the plague — ought not every 
pulpit and press in the land to declaim against it ? 
Who can say that our laws prohibiting gambling are 
unjust, or one whit too severe ? Hence is it not the 
plain duty of every Christian man and woman, and 
every one who has the welfare of his fellows at heart. 



OU<R SUNDAY TALKS. 3 q 

to strengthen the arm of the law in this behalf, and to 
unite in creating- and sustaining- a public sentiment in 
relation thereto, that will banish the vice from our 
borders, or at least drive it into the alley ways and 
secret corners of society, where it can no longer poison 
the common air we breathe. 

Thei'e is no division of sentiment among thoughtful 
people concerning the giant vices and wrongs of the 
world. Murder, arson, theft, drunkenness — these over- 
towering sins find naught but condemnation in every 
heart. But it is the smaller and more seductive vices — 
fashionable gambling, drinking, social dissipation, etc., 
— that " stir a fever in the blood " of society, and pave 
the way for those greater vices, to indulge in which is 
moral and physical death. 

The Church often preaches against the venality and 
licentiousness of the press; but when the former throws 
the mantle of its sanctity over gambling in any form, it 
becomes our turn to preach the gospel of a better and 
purer morality. 

«-^-~^ 4>fc?<f> -4w~-*-> 



Parents who wear out their lives in the acquisition of property 
to leave for their children to scatter, do a double wrong — first to 
themselves and next to their children. The bird that would 
learn to fly must lean on its own wing. 

It is better to live rich — that is, rich in the sumptuous 
enjoyment of all soulful things — and die poor in purse, than to 
live an emptly soul-life, and leave millions for heirs to quarrel 
ver. 



He who conquers himself wins the rarest and highest victory— 
a garlanded hero he from the tiercest battle ever fought and won. 



Y TALKS. 



^ejs to (foe Ijjtigftt* 



Jjljf^pEEP to the right," is a law of tlie road, which 
"-jlgJC^ when obeyed saves one a world of trouble. 

OH Society is a public highway on a grand scale 
i 1 \ — a great moral .turnpike whereon a hurrying, 
t jostling, restless crowd of badly assorted 
t humanity is ever thronging. Here is life in all 
its better phases- childhood with its golden hair and 
wondering eves; youth with its widening, thoughtful 
outlook; manhood with its firm step and earnest 
purpose; old age with its bowed form and whitened 
locks. Here, too, are thickly strewn the wrecks of life — 
misguided childhood, headstrong and wayward; erring 
youth, rioting in frivolity and dissipation, and sowing 
the seeds of physical decay and moral death; vicious 
manhood, treading the downward road; and decrepit 
age, sinister and sere, with its painful memories, and 
hopeless future.- All commingling in the one great 
journey from the cradle to the grave. 

How much discord, inharmony and jostling would be 
avoided, in this journey, if each traveler would only 
" keep to the right." 

There is a pitfall before you. young man a temptation 
to evil a snare for your feet. You are forming habits 

of idleness, dissipation and extravagance, which will 
stick to you like the shirt of Nessus. hampering your 
nobler efforts, and eventually dragging you down to the 
gateway of despair. Keep to the right and avoid it. 

That is a doubtful business venture, sir. in which you 



OU<k SUM® AY TALKS. 



V 



are about to engage, — one, perhaps, involving loss of 
self-respect and sacrifice of manly principle. You 
see where, by taking advantage of your neighbor's 
ignorance, you can get the best of him in a trade; or by 
some smart trick of the law you can evade some 
responsibility you have willingly assumed, or shirk 
some duty that lies in your way. Keep to the right; 
there only is the path of honor. 

You, neighbor, when tempted to deal in gossip or 
scandal, — to give way to the natural meanness within 
you — to let your temper get the upper hand of your 
judgment — to play the tyrant in your family — to 
withhold the gentle word of love or praise from her 
who walks by your side — to lower the standard of your 
honor, or do aught that would make you less manly or 
noble in the eyes of good men or angels, keep to the 
right. 

" Keep to the right." These golden words should 
be engraven in letters of living light on the temple of 
every human soul. They should stand forth as finger 
posts at the junction of every wrong — at the point of 
every divergence from the straight path of rectitude — 
by every wayside temptation. Keep to the right, young 
man, spurning every ignoble thought — every unmanly 
action. Thus will you lay up treasures for a grand old 
age, and life will bear for you its richest fruits. 



He who is a stockholder in the stars, in the glad sunshine, in 
the fragrance of the flowers, in the songs of birds and in the 
laughter of children, and who has an interest in the aspirations 
and outreachings <>f humanity, is the possessor of treasures that 
all the gold in Christendom could not purchase. 



44 OU<R SUNDAY TALKS. 



^iel€^3p^|ata&W0a&»iCa^* 



^fljppHE greatest obstacle in the pathway of man's 

^ggjj^l advancement to a higher plane of life, in all the 

~^s$< past ages, has been his dependence upon God 5 

Jj. rather than upon himself. He has hoped and 

$ prayed and waited for some Omnipotent, 

Unseen and Unknown Power to do his work 

for him — to pull him out of the slough of ignorance, 

superstition and natural cussedness — until he has 

become well nigh fossilized. He has" watched the 

clashing of moral forces, all along the line of history, 

and has seen the world deluged in blood and tears. He 

has beheld nations struggle into existence and disappear 

in carnage and woe. And all this as though lie were an 

idle spectator in the universe, never dreaming that this 

was his world, and that it was his especial business to 

save it from perdition. 

In depending upon God to do the work of humanity 
we demonstrate not only our own worthlessness, but 
how little we understand the great and Divine plan 
of creation. We are not the blind, unreasoning 
instruments, in the hand of Omnipotence, that many, by 
their works at least, would have us believe. We arc 
here for a grander purpose than it ever entered into the 
brain of man to imagine. We are here to act as well as 
to be acted upon — to work out, in and through ourselves 
that truer life, that more perfect manhood, that has 
been the dream of the prophet and the hope of the sage, 
in all the unfolding ages of the world's history. 

The man who prays to be led " not into temptation,' 



OU'R SUNDAY TALKS. 41 

should, if not strongly enough grounded in moral 
principle to resist temptation, keep out of temptation's 
way. He who prays for His " will to be done on earth 

as if is in Heaven," should endeavor to hud out what, 
that will is; and. as he expects God to work through 
him, to begin and do a little of the work himself, and 
thereby show his willingness in the matter. He should 
stop crowding his neighbor, and should cultivate and 
practice the noble virtues, and set up the millennium 
in his own life and character. He who prays God to 
give him this day his daily bread, should understand 
that after all his praying the bread must come through 
his own effort. If not so then there would never be 
such a thing as starvation or famine in the world. 
What a mockery of Divine goodness it is to hear a rich 
man, as he gathers in his purse strings, pray to God to 
remember the widow and the fatherless in their affliction, 
to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. Why doesn't 
lie go down into his pocket and do it himself? How 
can he expect God to help the poor without the use of 
his money ? 

And so in all that relates to the welfare of the race — 
to all social, political and moral reforms — to all 
mitigation of human ills — of pauperism, crime, insanity, 
and the disordered conditions of society and humanity 
of every kind— we must quit leaving this work for God 
to do. If we would have it done at all we must take 
the matter into our own hands. For the only way (rod 
works in the moral world is through human agency. 

We unhesitatingly assert that the character and 
quality of the human race are in the keeping of the 
race, and may be made good, bad or indifferent, as we 
will; that if we should give one-half as much time and 
thought to the uplifting of humanity as we do to 



money-getting, it would not be fifty years hence before 
we should have no use for prisons, or insane asylums; 
have no tramps nor unemployed laborers; no squalid 
poverty; no overcrowded cities, with their vast 
multitudes of wretched and diseased humanity; no 
use for armies or navies, with all their costly and 
barbaric appendages. How, do you ask, could all this 
be accomplished? Simply by humanity taking the 
matter into their own hands, and not waiting for 
Providence to do the business; or rather by allowing 
Providence to commence and carry out the work 
through them. There is no good reason why society — 
the better portion thereof — should not grapple with the 
giant evils that beset the race, and purge the world 
thereof. This is by ho means as difficult a task as it 
might seem — nothing like as difficult as it is to carry 
the fearful burdens we now endure. 



Don't. — Don't be selfish, or mean, or narrow-minded — if you 
can help it. Don't consider it your duty to be a common carrier 
for any sort of scandal. Don't trifle with those you love, nor 
tread on the heart of a friend. Don't meddle with other people's 
business Don't think evil of any one, even of those you do not 
like. The world is wide enough for all — leave them alone Don't 
try to pull down those above you; but always seek to lift those 
beneath you up to your level. Don't make yourself disagreeable 
to any one simply because you know how. Don't yield servile 
submission to tobacco, whisky, or any other debasing habit: but 
have manhood and womanhood enough to be decent and whole- 
some, aud masters of your own bodies. Don't be contented with 
emptiness of heart or brain; but cultivate the gentle amenities of 
life, aud store your mind with useful knowledge. Don't be sus- 
picious of others who are just as good as you are, and perhaps a 
little better. Don't be a fool. 



O U <k S U JV 'D AY TALKS. 



45 



(DjXw.ir SJLtTC^&ioirjK, 



1 



|HE fact that man possesses much of the brute 
S| element in his nature is strongly indicative of 
^p~ his brute origin. In tracing his ancestral line 
J{, backward through the ages of his slow but 
J. certain unfol linen t the thread is lost in that 
J shadowy prophecy of the race, the huge 
prehistoric savage, clothed in the skins of wild beasts; 
or stark beneath tropical suns; with no implements of 
art or industry, no weapons of warfare save the club 
and stone; a dweller in caves and hollow trees; the 
companion of animals long since extinct. Bridging 
backwards, in imagination, a few more aeons of time, 
and we behold him a magnificent specimen of an 
anthropoid ape, walking erect, shaggy and coarse, with 
massive chest and jaws, low frontal brain, small pointed 
ears, skull thick and head broad at the base, showing 
great tenacity of life. What a terrible but splendid 
beast — fierce, ferocious, wild. How he tyrannizes over 
his fellow beasts —driving them from their dens without 
"due process of law," and taking up his own abode 
therein — meeting his equals in physical strength in 
fierce and deadly contests, and by his greater cunning, 
entrapping liis superiors to their destruction. 

The descendants of this terrible brute, in whose 
nature was enfolded the germs of a Shakspeare, a 
Milton, a Rosa Bonheur and an Mice Cary, have 
brought down with them many of their ancestral traits. 
And it is to this fact we are indebted for all the 
inharmony and wretchedness that exist in the world. 



OU(R S UNO AY TALKS. 



It is the wild beast in human nature that prompts the 
strong to oppress the weak, that withholds the needed 
sympathy from the poor and unfortunate — the exercise 
of ever blessed charity from the erring. It is the 
unsubdued ancestral element in man — the outcropping* 
of his prehistoric brute nature, when he contended with 
other brutes for a bone, that prompts him now to alee 
advantage of his fellows in a bargain; to grind one and 
a half per cent a month out of a poor man struggling 
to save his little home from the exactions of the law; to 
gather to himself riches at the expense of honor; to 
betray a friend; to tyrannize over a wife; to lead astray 
the young and confiding; to steal and lie and murder; 
in short to live a life that is at war with that truer life 
that comes only through man's unfoldment upon the 
higher spiritual and intellectual planes of his existence. 

As the brain of man becomes finer and more 
spiritualized, overarching the animal and intellectual 
life, the meanness of his nature gradually disappears. 
A deep sense of justice, and a feeling of divine harmony 
and good will to man, take the place of that cruel 
selfishness that works but to mar and destroy. The 
man drifts farther and farther away from the crude 
conditions in which recorded history first found him, 
and comes nearer and nearer into the likeness of that 
ideal manhood which shall yet till the earth in "the 
good time coming." 

To eliminate the crude, the coarse, the animal, and 
take on the pure, the good, the beautiful, should he the 
end and aim of every individual soul. Some there are 
who are seeking for the best in their own lives and 
characters, and they are " the salt of the earth " — the 
leaven that shall yet permeate and reconstruct the whole. 

If we only realized the help we might be to those 



OU'R SUJ<! ( bAY TALKS, 



t7 



less favored than ourselves, by the exercise of our 
best sympathies and charities toward them — by the 
encouraging and kindly spoken word — by the manifesta- 
tion of a heartfelt interest in their welfare — by the 
radiation of that sweet influence divine which every 
soul luis the power to impart — how rapidly would 
discord and unhappiness disappear from the 



wroim. 



earth. Is it not worth trying? 



Piety of Fun. — " 'Charades, Songs, Unique Wax Figures, Babes 
in the Woods, very amusing bottle performance, and other inter- 
esting amusements.' Well I declare," remarked Spiggles to us, a 
few days since, on reading the above list of attractions announced 
to come oft' at a Church Fair; "the sheep and the goats are so near 
alike no\v-a-days that it is difficult to tell where the wool ends and 
tin- hair begins." We were struck with the force of this rough- 
shod remark, and were led to inquire why it is that people usually 
imagine that in order to make one's "calling and election sure," 
he must necessarily wear a sombre visage, shut himself out from 
all the enjoyments of the world and live the life of a gloomy 
ascetic! The old Calvanistic idea that makes future happiness 
attainable only through groans and tears, and that au individual 
should be willing to be damned for the glory of God, is fust 
fading from the world. We believe in the religion of joy, and the 
nifty of innocent fun. and do not think it is fair that the world's 
people should have an exclusive patent to all the good things in 
this life. Harmony is happiness; and the best homage that man 
can render to his Creator is by living in harmony with the laws of 
his own being— doing good to others by lifting the lowly to higher 
planes of existence, and continually reaching outward and upward 
for something higher and better. Entertaining such opinions 
we can see nothing in the aho\e hill of attractions inconsistent 
with true religion, neither could we had dancing been included. 
It was thus we put the case to Spiggles, and the young man 
subsided. 



OUfR SUNDAY TALKS, 



~WgJcva!t of Ifce 



^gATCHMAN, what of the night? Do the 
^ ,;Jijk^i heavens indicate fair weather or foul, for the 

fi coming day? In short, what are the signs of 
the times ? 

S There has never been a period in the world's 
history when such general and widespread unrest 
prevailed in the minds of men as at the present time. 
The deep sea of human thought seems lashed into 
mountain waves that break and foam along the rocky 
shores of time, undermining and overturning many a 
consecrated monument of tradition that but recently 
seemed as impregnable as the everlasting hills. With 
the modern liberty and license of thought no subject 
is too sacred for investigation; and many of the 
profoundest thinkers of the world are to-day found 
peering into the most sacred places — into venerated 
crypts and sanctuaries, where never before profane eye 
has dared to penetrate. Religion is undergoing a 
change as marvelous as the birth of a world. Science 
is divesting it of its crudities and inconsistencies, and 
reason is adding to and adorning it with more and more 
rational interpretations. 

In the civil and political world, likewise, we find 
agitation and commotion everywhere manifest. As 
thought begins to permeate the mass of mind, convulsion 
and revolution follow; and old and long tried forms of 
government are being subjected to ordeals as crucial 
:is the judgment of the ages. Our own republican 



OU'k SUNDAY TALKS. 



institutions were never subjected to so severe a strain; 
and, in fact, to the minds of many of our political 
economists, the question of the ability of a mixed and 
heterogeneous people to govern themselves is by no 
means clear. Well may they ask, If the ignorant and 
down-trodden masses of the Old World are incapable of 
self-government, in their own countries, as they doubt- 
less are, wherein does that incapacity cease upon their 
translation to our shores V Here, too, after a century 
of growth and prosperity, we find ourselves confronted 
by new and undreamed of obstacles in the shape of an 
unemployed, useless and unnecessary humanity — of 
muscle supplemented by machinery — of strange phases 
of oppression — all complicated factors in the problem 
of self-government, the solution of which is yet 
involved in much uncertainty. 

And then in the social w r orld w6 find a very maelstrom 
of agitation, with threatening thunder-bolts all around 
the sky. Inharmony in marital life is peopling the 
world with discordant and murderous elements, fatal to 
the truest welfare of society. Divorces, which in past 
ages were almost unknown, have come to number nearly 
one-third the marriages. Our prisons and insane 
asylums are overflowing with diseased and disordered 
humanity as the fruits of this inharmony; while our 
great cities swarm with multitudes of badly organized, 
wretched and half-starved beings whose presence in the 
world is a calamity and a curse, and who never should 
have been suffered to exist. 

What means all this commotion ? Is the world 
growing worse, and is our civilization a failure V 
Perhaps the latter, in a measure, but surely not the 
former. Never was the world so blest with grand, 
enlightened men and women as now— never such an 
array of noble thinkers, philosophers or scholars. 



While each former age lias produced its few, this has 
produced its multitude. Out of the clashing- and chaos 
of human affairs are evolving nobler tyjies of manhood 
and womanhood than, with rare exceptions, any that 
history records. For amid all the inharmony of the 
world .there are divine harmonies radiating and orbing 
all, along the lines of which some souls are mounting 
to sublimer bights of goodness and power; and thus is 
each age a step in advance of the preceding one. and 
in each we behold the prophecy of a better age to come. 



Resolved, That an unmarried man is happier, and can do more good, than a 
married man. 

The above resolution constituted the theme of discussion by a 
literary society of Oakland, recently. As regards the "hap- 
piness" part of the proposition; there is a wide diversity of opinion 
as to what constitutes happiness. If sleeping alone in a hog pen, 
with no one to scratch your back, and with freedom to chew 
tobacco in bed and expectorate where yon please; — if feeding on 
boarding-house hash, (a compound of stale beef, cockroaches and 
red hair,) and having the chamber-maid use your tooth-brush; — 
if living selfishly for your own enjoyment, with the feeling gradu- 
ally creeping over you that you are of no earthly use in the world; 
—if, when you die, to be unfeelingly chucked into a hole in the 
ground, without one tear of fond remembrance to moisten the 
earth that rattles down upon your coffin; — if this condition of 
things constitutes happiness, then most assuredly is a single life 
especially conducive of happiness. Still, one had better endure 
all this, and infinitely more of the same sort, than to be yoked for 
life to a good-for-nothing woman — too many of which modern 
society fashions and turns out upon the world. But a good. true. 
noble, loving woman, there is nothing like her. 



As between a good heart and n sound head, we would prefer tin 
former — in a next-door neighbor ! 



OU<R SUM® AY TALKS. 



H£m%.x» of Ijpadte?^ 



^j'^Y^l^HAT is he worth ? " is a question often asked 

t^JI$ with reference to the financial standing of 

Wfi i some man before the world — as though the 

X all in all of value embraced in the word 

i" what " consisted of houses and lands, of a huge 
rent-roll, a vast accumulation of Government 
bonds and a plethoric bank account. There are, 
however, other and infinitely higher standards of value 
for determining the real genuine worth of a man, which 
are seldom taken into the account— standards as much 
above those of a money consideration as the star- 
gemmed sky is above the desert of Sahara. 

What is he worth? "Well, they say he is worth a 
million — two millions — five millions." Is that all? 
"All? What would you have more?" Everything 
more. His millions are but the veriest dross and rags, 
without some golden stores of manhood behind them — 
some sparkling diamonds of sterling character — to back 
them up with, and utilize them for his own highest 
good, and the welfare of his fellows. 

Take your average millionaire — your Stewarts, Van- 
derbilts, Astors, — how did they acquire their vast- 
possessions of earthly treasure? By the exercise of a 
greedy acquisitiveness that was deaf to every voice of 
humanity; by the rise in property values caused by the 
labor of others; by the thumb-screws of usury on the 
humble homes and holdings of the poor; by purchased 
favoritism in legislation and law; by oppression, extortion 



S* 



OUft SUNDAY TALKS 



and tyranny; in short, by the crushing out in their own 
souls of every noble and generous impulse, and the 
development of a selfishness as hard and cruel as " the 
pestilence that walketh in darkness," or the hungry 
wolf of famine that gnaws at the vitals of the poor. 
What are such men worth ? They are worth the lime 
in their bones, the iron in their blood, the carbon and 
oxygen in their fat and muscles — they are worth the 
elements which they received from generous Nature to 
piece out their physical organisms. And when Nature 
receives back her own, as she is sure to in the end, she 
doubtless feels, if she reasons, as did the poor parson 
whose hat was circulated among a parsimonious audience 
for contributions, but which was returned empty — he 
thanked the Lord that his hat had been returned to 
him. So will Nature thank God that she has received 
back her raw material for a man, and will seek to make 
a better investment the next time. 

Except in cases of inherited or accidental wealth, we 
hold that it is only by the exercise of the baser faculties 
of the mind that large possessions can be accpiired. If 
acquired in the ordinary business pursuits of life, it must 
necessarily be by taking undue advantage of others. 
For no man, by his own hands, or a fair use of the labor 
of other hands, can honestly amass much more than a 
fair competency; or than, if reasonably liberal and 
mindful of the interests of others, will secure for him a 
comfortable old age. This proposition is self-evident. 

He who adds nothing to the sum total of human 
happiness; who bears no burden cheerfully; who 
aggregates to himself riches and power but to oppress; 
who assuages no sorrow and wipes away no tear; but 
lives the life of the horse leech and sponge, blesses 
the world only in his "taking off." Of his earthly 



OU<k SUNDAY TALKS. 53 

substance we may erect costly monuments to his 
memory; but what a stupendous sarcasm '? Who would 
not rather live in the cherished thoughts of a grateful 
posterity, enshrined in the souls of those he had lived 
to bless and ennoble, than wear another Cheops above 
his useless dust ? 

No, a thousand times no; riches do not constitute the 
all of worth. The brave, true soul, that patiently and 
faithfully fills his allotted place in life, shedding upon 
all around the aroma of generous deeds; with ever a 
helping hand and an encouraging word for a struggling 
brother — though he may be empty of purse and scrip, 
and " have not where to lay his head," is, nevertheless, 
the possessor of treasures that a Croesus might envy. 
For such a soul there is no death. It shines out 
brighter and brighter with the ages. 



"Act Well Your Pakt." — Our happiness in this life depends 
not so much on circumstances or surroundings, as in our 
determined efforts to do our best in all conditions in which 
we are placed. Our common heritage is more or less allied to 
sorrow and pain, but we have within ourselves the antidote of 
heart-sunshine that will alleviate, if not remove many of our 
troubles. But we persistently reject the means of happiness that 
lie within our reach, by ignoring present small pleasures, in hopes 
of enjoying greater ones in the future good time coming, which 
always keeps just ahead, and is therefore unattainable. We 
cultivate little cares till they sometimes attain enormous growth, 
by constantly dwelling on them and dolefully rehearsing them to 
our friends, when we should do our best to try to rise above them. 
In the most difficult and trying conditions there will often be a 
bright side, which, if seized upon, will, lead one straight out of 
tangled paths into the light; and it is well to bear this continually 
in mind. " Act well your part, there all the honor lies." 



S4 OU(R SUNDAY TALKS. 



*m&&zsK*& #p>inu 



Leaves have their time to fall, 

And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 

And stars to set, but all — 

Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death." 

IIHERE is no religion however true, or sincerely 

believed in; no philosophy however consoling-, 

*§|> v * that can fully reconcile us to death. To those 

J! of vis with whom faith is supplemented by the 

§ absolute knowledge of the spirit's existence 

beyond the confines of this mortal life, and 

who, if any, are possessed of a philosophy that should 

soothe, and comfort, and sustain us in the trying hour 

when our loved ones pass over the dark river — to us, 

even, death has ever a nameless dread. Our hearts rebel 

against it, and we oftentimes refuse to be comforted. 

Especially is this true when Death lays its chilling 

hand upon the young — upon the children of our love. 

The gray-haired sire, who has lived his allotted years, 
and fulfilled his mission on earth, may sink to sleep 
in Nature's enfolding arms as calmly and sweetly as the 
tired babe is lulled to rest upon its mother's breast. 
We are prepared, in a measure, for death when it comes 
in the fullness of time to the aged. Reason then teaches 
us to accept it as a wise fulfillment of law. And if such 
an one has lived wisely, made good use of himself, and 
left the world better than he found it, we know that 
death to him is a glorious translation to a higher life; 
that with his treasured wealth of character he will be 



OU<k SUNDAY 'TALKS. 



fully prepared for the fellowship of those shining ones 
that live just beyond the veil. 

But when death comes to the child, or to the young 
man just entering upon the busy scenes of life, it has a 
much sadder aspect. And yet there is a consolation in 
this thought: Nature aims to complete whatever she 
undertakes. The human spirit once individualized and 
started on its long journey, will be taken care of, never 
fear. If it fail of obtaining its proper measure of 
earthly experience, we doubt not ways and means will 
be provided for its securing what will be equivalent 
to such experiences elsewhere. Nature is ample in 
her resources. She is a gentle and an impartial mother, 
and, in time or eternity, will, we believe, give her 
children all a fair start on the road to happiness. The 
journey may be longer for some than for others, but it 
will lead to the same blissful home in the vast and eternal 
Beyond. Some may tread the thorny path of sorrow 
with bleeding feet — be hampered and surrounded by 
physical conditions that impede the spirit's growth — but 
our loving Mother understands all that. She knows 
that we are not always responsible for what we are — that 
our natures at best are but inherited — have come down 
to us through an ancestry that reaches away back into 
infinity. She realizes the temptations and trials through 
which we must needs pass — the physical infirmities and 
diseases to which we are subject. She has an infinity 
of ways, an infinity of room and an infinity of time in 
which to perform her work. And we doubt not she will 
do it well. 

Then may we not hope that death is but the passing 
on to another stage of existence; that the spirit, unable 
to cope with its earthly conditions, breaks its mortal 
bonds and is borne away to the companionship of loved 
ones gone before; that there the child will find gentle 



& OU® SUM'. 



protection and tender care; the misguided and erring, 
wise counsellors and true and Loving friends ? Removed 
from the besetting temptations and surroundings of 
earth, may it n<>l be thai the real work of growth and 
progress will begin, and be carried forward t<> a full and 
happj fruition? 

( 1 diiI(I we inquire of our loved ones passed to the 
hither shore, " How is it with thee ? " and could we bear 
the answer thej would scud back to us from their s|»iril 

home, we doubt not thai answer would be, " Ml LS 

well." TIicn would It'll as that they rejoiced thai their 
earth life was over, and their sorrows and sufferings at 

an end. They would send hack words of greeting to 

the loved ones left behind. They would urge us to be 
patienl and trusting to the end, discharging every Know n 
dulv to ourselves and to our fellow beings. They 
would assure us that when at last our earthly pilgrimage 

should he o'er, they would be there to give us a J0VOUS 
welcome to their home in the beautiful Summer Land. 



r~*^*& 4$-)H< §> -fabv-r-J 



l ctlic tradesman who seeks your oustom under the pretext that be 
is selling yon goods at less than cost, while at the same time he 
makes a reasonable profit thereon, and the customer who takes 
advantage of another's necessities to pay less for an article than 

il is worth, were shaken in B bag together, it would l>e hard to 

tell which would come out first. 



Tiik Whisperer Of scandal, or the carrier of gossip, leaves a 

slimier hack than the poisoned reptile pollutes the fair, beautiful 

world around with a blast deadlier than the " red hot tipped 

simoon." 



ILKS 



57 



«C!f ecll o ini^:e;0i S$| )i ii d n \\ \ i ii I li b ti ejeu 



...l.tyT^HK (.icscnl anamalous conditioi] of society, 

tSsBSS with its constant and extra demands upon the 

charitable for the relief of the Laborless and 

J i. destitute, is no doubt work in;;' a baneful influence 

i upon the hearts and con iciences "l' the benevo 

J lent-, in drying up the fountains of their charities, 

and making them as hard and heartless as the skinflints 

of society, whose hearts were never warmed with a 

generous impulse. They are overburdened with the 

Borrows and necessities of others, unti] they are inclined 

to rebel in spiril againsl t he whole business, and as 

matter of self protection close t, 1 1 < • i 1- hearts and their 

purses to the piteous pleadings of tin' pour Thus are 

they becoming calloused to those tender sympathy and 

gentle humanities which lifl man above the hard, cold 

level of unfeeling and unsympathetic self! ihne 

Tins condition of things is greatly to l><- deplored; for 
whatever may happen to the race, it cannot afford to 
lose any <>f its good qualities, It has non< to spare 
On the other hand it ought to be making a sure and 
stead} advance on the road to righteousness, by 
cultivating every virtue and laying in a good stoci of 
character foi I he t me to come. We do no! thini a 
man can well have too much of humanity aboui him 
too much of charity for the misfortunes and wretched 
aess of his fellow beings. At, the same time he 
duty to himself, and in the bestowal <>f his charities he 
should do so within the bounds of rea on, and uoi 



5 8 OUR SUNDAY TALKS. 

allow the exercise of his generous impulses to wreck his 
own health or happiness. (This advice will strike most 
people as wholly unnecessary!) 

We believe that every individual has the right to all 
the happiness he can find, provided, in obtaining the 
same, he appropriates what properly belongs to nobody 
else. It is his duty to make the most of this life, and 
get all the good out of it that is rationally possible. He 
can not do this if he allows his spiritual or intellectual 
unfoldment to be retarded from any cause. 

Nature wisely conceals from us, except in a meagre 
way, the sufferings she inflicts upon others. She knows 
that most of us have all the troubles and heart-aches of 
our own that we ought to endure, or can well bear 
up under. And yet there is no soul so completely 
bankrupt, both in worldly wealth and in the finer 
humanities, as to have nothing to spare for others — 
nothing of needed temporal assistance, or of sympathy 
or brotherly love. If such there be they are to be 
pitied. For them there is no blessing in the beautiful 
sunshine, nor in the melody of the birds or rippling 
brooks. The glory of the earth and the grandeur of 
the heavens have no voice for their ears. They are 
souls out of tune, and can only give forth jangling and 
discordant sounds. 

It should be the aim and ambition of all to get 
themselves in tune — in harmony with the universe, — to 
find "lit, as nearly as possible, what Nature means with 
them, and then lend a helping hand to the turning out 
of a good job. Nature furnishes the raw material of 
manhood, and she expects us to work it into shape. 
The material may not all be of first class quality; in fact 
some of it may be badly damaged by ancestral taint: 
yet the true theory is to make the best use of such 



OU'R SUMOAY TALKS. jg 

material as w<> may chance to have. It is no doubt 
more creditable to some people that they are only 
average sinners, than for others that they are shining- 
saints. In the former case it is a wonder they are no 
worse, considering- the circumstances of their birth and 
early training-. In the latter, it is a wonder, for the 
same reason, how they could have been anything else. 

All that the good Father requires of any man is to 
do the best he can. 



'WpUmt ifcte 3pi£fer S^feoisi* 



." TJY-HEIIE are really but few points of difference 
'VirrA^ between honest men in matters essential to 

r* human happiness, here or hereafter. They all 
mean right, no matter of what creed or of no 
v creed — Christian, Jew, pagan, or heathen; infidel 
f or atheist. It is usually, in fact we may say 
always, of those things which men know the least, and 
of which little or nothing can ever be known, that they 
differ and wrangle about the most and loudest. They 
can readily agree in their opinions upon what they 
really know, or upon principles of right and justice. 
Whoever asserts that it is wrong to steal, or bear false 
witness, will find no opponents among honest men. 
Definitions of right and wrong really vary but little 
with enlightend minds; and there will be found to be a 
hundred points of agreement between them to one of 
disagreement. 



It is about the essential things of life, concerning 
which men can best agree, that make society pleasant 
and promotive of the truest happiness to its individual 
members. This common level of social life should be 
clearly defined in every mind, leaving the individual at 
liberty to traverse the byways and jungles of thought 
unmolested. In other words, we should learn to agree 
in those matters which best conserve the common good, 
and be willing to disagree in all things else. Common 
courtesy should teach us to be considerate and respectful 
of the opinions of others, however they may differ from 
our own. Dogmatism is always something to be 
deprecated as unworthy a noble mind. It is really 
indicative of ignorance. It is never so pronounced as 
with small and uncultured minds. For one to assert 
positively that he is right and his neighbor wrong, 
concerning what neither of them knows anything about, 
is as absurd as for two blind men to fall out concerning 
the nature of light. And yet there have been more 
bruised hearts, and broken heads, growing out of just 
such dogmatic assertion than the world has any idea of. 

But we rejoice that the world is growing wiser in this 
respect. Good men and women of any sect, or of no 
sect, look so much alike in dress and general appearance, 
now-a-days, and are so much alike in manner and purpose, 
that no one can distinguish the difference, even if any 
such difference existed. Men no longer wear their faith 
upon their sleeves — in the cut of their coats or color 
of their neckties — but in their hearts and lives. We 
judge of them by other standards of value than by their 
professions of creeds, or the length of their faces on 
Sunday. No amount of piety, that is not well Hanked 
and supported by good deeds, will any longer save 
a man in the eyes of the church or the world. 
Enlightened thought everywhere has come to regard 



OU'R SUMOAf TALKS. 61 

goodness as very much of one quality, no matter by 
whom practiced. This is as it should he. It shows 
that the world is unfolding in the right direction. It is 
a prophecy of the coming time when the common plane 
of thought will be so broad that there will be but little 
room for side issues, and when such differences of 
opinion as we may have will be so insignificant com- 
paratively as scarcely to create a ripple on the deep sea 
of thought. 

The world will become wiser and better just as fast as 
we are willing that it should, — whenever we are ready 
to " pool our issues" and unite in a common purpose 
for the common good. 



^ta&nofeanrc I« ^^jnrrmwntcnjrt jlfiHfe. 



1 geo>ff\j).rm 

J^lilj^pE who leads a forlorn hope "into the jaws of 

4jA.A| death," with the eyes of the world resting 

"^f^C upon him, is much less a hero than he who, 

}l beset by the snares and temptations of life, 

? triumphs over the evil promptings of his own 

nature. There is an unwritten heroism in 

common life that far excels the storied heroism of the 

great and powerful. It costs one something to be brave 

and true when no eye but the eye of one's own soul 

rests upon him — when no approving smile cheers him 

on save that of his own conscience. And yet there are 

many such heroes in all the silent and unheralded ways 

of life. 



We have seen a fair young girl, frail in health, but 
brave and strong in purpose, turn aside from the seduc- 
tive allurements to a frivolous and empty life — from the 
temptations to a luxurious and wicked one — and, storing 
her mind with the treasures of knowledge, fit herself 
for a noble work and duty. We have seen her take up 
her own and others' burdens, and, ofttimes with aching 
heart and bleeding feet, bear them uncomplainingly 
along life's rugged way. We have seen a young man, 
cast out upon the world, homeless and friendless, but 
buoyant in spirit, and exuberant with healthy life, 
— with mind and heart keenly sensitive to all the 
fascinating pleasures that lure but to destroy, — shutting 
himself out from the companionship of his kind, 
and setting his face firmly against the enticements 
and besetting snares of the world. We have seen 
him " burning the midnight oil," and with eyes fixed 
on the shining bights, laying deep and broad the 
foundations of a character upon which to rear the 
superstructure of a manhood that should withstand the 
" shocks of time," — the turmoil and vicissitudes of life, 
— till old age should mantle it with its snows. We have 
seen men and women in humble life, — born to the hard 
conditions of poverty and toil, — with hearts attuned to 
all goodness, and souls sweet with the refining baptism 
of unselfish charity. We have seen them bending 
beneath their burdens of care, of sickness, of poverty 
— with faces illumined with the smile of God, — grand 
men and noble women, whose unwritten lifediistories 
might be summed up in the words — " No trust betrayed 
— no duty left undone." 

Are not such as these the world's truest heroes and 
heroines ? And are not their names deserving of enroll- 
ment on Fame's whitest and most enduring scroll V 
— -«( —_-,<,♦«,)» — 

The profomiclest vacuum in the world is au empty soul. 



OU<R SUN'DAf TALKS. . 6) 



iPMIsa-ssciiiJIiru acnf 3fWe* 



•' ; y^T is safe to assume that all humanity desire 

'^«At> happiness, and any failure to attain the fruition 

'W of this desire, must be from lack either of 

«, proper conditions for right enjoyment, or of 

§ proper effort to that end. The want of proper 

J conditions — such as inherited tendencies to 

disease, strong natural bias to evil, and unfavorable 

surroundings in early life — are all beyond the control 

of the individual; hence the manhood or womanhood of 

every person must necessarily take its complexion 

largely from circumstances beyond and outside of their 

own volition. This should teach us charity towards 

others worse conditioned than ourselves; while at the 

same time it should stimulate us to put forth every 

effort in our power to master the results of bad 

conditions in our own natures. It should also teach us 

the importance of so living that we may not transmit to 

others the evils that have been handed down to us. 

" Cease to do evil and learn to do well." This is the 
lesson from which is evolved all reform in individual or 
public life. When a man learns that the right thing is 
the best thing — whether the lesson comes to him by 
a gradual unfoldment of the understanding, through 
the exercise of enlightened reason, or by some sudden 
evolution of feeling radiating his nature to a nobler 
purpose — he is on the right track. 

What we want in practical, every-day life, is an article 
of humanity that will "wash" — a fabric of character 



6 4 OU<R SUN (DAY TALKS. 

that will " wear," and if possible improve with age. 
We want less crowding — less selfishness among men. 
We want more of that outflowing brotherhood that can 
sympathize with another's woe, and that is ready to 
reach out a friendly hand to help pull another's load. 
We want well balanced heads and warm humane hearts 
— not frisking in senseless antics on Pisgah's heights 
to-day, and to-morrow groping and wailing by the 
" cold streams of Babylon," but with unfaltering 
steadiness and firmness — with an uprightness and 
integrity of character that knows no deviation — moving 
right onward to a purpose — the highest purpose — a 
grand and noble manhood and womanhood. 

Here is a common plane of thought and action upon 
which all true men can meet and labor. It is our 
everlasting qitibbling about methods that destroys one- 
half the good that good people would do in the world. 
We are not content to let others think as they will, even 
though the outcome of their thought, coupled with 
their aim in life, means all one thing, at least so far as 
the general welfare and happiness of mankind in this 
life is concerned. We live in the eternal, ever present 
Now. If we make the best use of our lives in the 
present tense, it is the best that we can do. 



«— «-^va^-§-)fcy<|>^2^v->~» 



As there is no such thing as equality among men in their capacity 
to master the conditions and bear the burdens of life, therefore 
government should recognize this fact and favor the weak horse in 
the team with the longer end of the whiffletree. In other words, 
the burdens of government should be made to rest upon the 
shoulders of those best able to bear them — which means graduated 
taxation. 



HifveiiQjenw acm€ ^$s$wnBiai»Iigs< 



''• j^T is impossible that all men should see all things 
| in the same light, owing to variations in capacity 

ffor observation, in development of brain, in 
natural bent and educational drift, of thought, 
5 and from various other causes which are patent to 
every student of human nature. It is doubtless 
well for us that there is this diversity among men, else 
this would be a very tame world. If all* were true 
Christians there would be no work of reformation for 
Christians to perform. If there were no temptations to 
sin there would be no particular virtue in goodness, on 
the same principle that if there was no alcohol in the 
world there would be no name for temperance — no 
virtue in abstinence. 

I! is impossible for the mind to reason itself into the 
belief that white is black, or that the sun rises in the 
west . There are propositions outside the realm of 
natural facts, propositions widely divergent in their 
character, which some minds can never accept as 
positive truths. Thus it seems that we are here in 
accordance with a great plan of the Universe — here to 
struggle with conditions and circumstances that seem 
essential to our growth and development as rational 
beings, and without which we should be mere passive 
instruments in the hands of Nature, as characterless and 
helpless as the log that floats upon the current of the 
river, outward and onward to some unknown sea. 

We look around us and we see doubters on every si.lr 
-honest and thoughtful doubters —doubters thronging 



66 OUfc SUN'bAY TALKS. 

the avenues of trade — scientific doubters — good men 
and noble women, who aim to walk uprightly in the 
world; who pay their honest debts; who wrong no man, 
* and whose hearts are filled with good will towards all the 
race. We shall not argue with those good people who 
believe these, their doubting fellow mortals, are all on 
the broad road to ruin. We simply know that they 
exist in vast numbers, and that they are seemingly 
beyond the reach of conviction of the errors of their 
opinions, if errors they are. And yet are they wholly 
without religious feeling ? Surely not, if the exercise 
of charity, brotherly love, and all those virtues which 
adorn human character count for aught. 

Again, we look around us and we behold misery, 
crime and ignorance everywhere — fellow-beings grovel- 
ing in grossness, and dead to every impulse of a noble 
manhood. We see on every hand the result of violated 
law — children robbed of their natural birthright to 
healthful bodies — the world peopled with moral de- 
formities — the strong oppressing the weak — might 
prevailing over right. Here is a field for believers and 
unbelievers alike — a common ground of religious 
usefulness that should know neither sect nor sex. It is 
the broad field of humanity, where all true men and 
women can meet and work to a common purpose. And 
how vast the work, how great the need of clear 
conceptions of human duty, and of an enlightened 
understanding that makes its pathway plain. 

When mankind stops wasting its substance of brain 
power and physical effort upon abstractions, and lays 
its hand firmly to the plow-share of practical reform, we 
shall have less use for prisons, for asylums for the 
indigent and insane — less poverty and inharniony in the 
world, and a higher average standard of human 
happiness. And when it learns more fully that true 



happiness comes only with right living and right doing, 
we shall cease to cavil at the opinions or beliefs of 
others. It is what a man does for humanity— not what 
dogmas he believes in— that will then express the mint 
value of the man. Would that we all had more charity 
for what may seem to us errors of opinion in others. 



TS$TI*S3t « l^rfigsiaoiw •■' 



'HAT is religion? Perhaps no better answer 
~ : }.-X)IL- <" 111 ,,<J tfiven to the question thau this: that it 
1 is the practice of goodness. Whether this 
answer embodies the all of religion, or not, as 
doubtless many will say not, certain it is that a 
religion without the practice of goodness is no 
better, if not worse (and generally worse), than no religion 
at all. It is the shell without the kernel— the casket 
without the jewel— the shadow without the substance. 
To the practice of this kind of religion— a religion with 
the element of goodness left out— may be attributed all 
the cruelties and crimes of martyrdom, and all the fierce 
persecution for opinion's sake, that have disgraced and 
blackened the ages, and left their ineffaceable stain 
upon the church. Although in the sunburst of enlight- 
ened thought of these " latter days," the terrible physical 
evils that followed the practice of a goodless, or Godless, 
religion in former times, are impossible forever more ; 
nevertheless the world, or rather the church, is largely 
overstocked with a modified form of the same article. 



Goodness, to be thoroughly genuine,— that is to 
possess staying qualities, — must be " bred in the bone." 
A fair article may be acquired, perhaps, by what is 
culled conversion— a sudden or spasmodic revolution of 
the mdral nature, like a change of the polarity of the 
earth, or something of that sort, — but it is too apt to be 
only superficial in its character — hardly skin deep. It 
seldom gets down through the froth of the emotions 
and strikes its grappling irons into the firm and solid 
substance of the soul. It is an impulsive sort of good- 
ness, that operates only in the heat, of a revival, and 
then congeals into a chronic condition of irreligious 
selfishness, if not of positive badness. 

The Great Spirit of Life, Law and Love works upon 
the moral forces of the world only through human 
agencies. Each individual soul is a self-constituted and 
divinely appointed and commissioned Committee of the 
Whole to carry out that work. The man who prays 
God to bless the widow and the fatherless, to clothe 
the naked and feed the hungry; or to do any other acl or 
thing that he has it, in his power to perform himself, is 
simply wasting his breath and trifling with his own moral 
nature, (rod doesn't work in that way. And yet how 
much of this sort of praying is done. It is the practice 
of religion with the soul of religion left out. 

If the money and time we spend in that kind of 
religious worship that endeavors, by penitence and 
tears, to placate a wrathful and revengeful God; or, by 
high-sounding praise and hallelujahs, to tickle the ears 
of a vain one. were devoted to the simple practice of 
goodness, isn't it barely possible that this would be a 
better and happier world, and that the Being we seek to 
honor would think all the better of us for it V At 
anyrate, would we not learn thereby to think better of 
ourselves? 



OU<k SUN'DAY TALKS. 

The religion that troubles itself about the heathen in 
pagan lands, or worries itself sick over the sins of an 
unregenerate world, while at the same time its neighbor 
across the way is struggling with the " wolf at the door," 
or perishing for a sympathetic word, isn't worth 
harvesting. It wouldn't yield a bushel to the acre; ami 
mostly cheat at that. 

If this world is ever to he made better,— and thai it 
will he is a moral certainty, for eternal progress is a law 
of nature,— it must he accomplished through human 
agency. No matter what power may he behind man 
and working through him, he must perform the work 
himself. No one will do it for him. He must answer 
his own prayers. And a first rate place to begin this 
work is right in his own soul. 

Most people are reasonably good when they find out 
what ails them. All they want is to have their faces set, 
in the right direction, when they will walk right. With 
our noble co-laborers in the church and the world, be it 
ours to assist in setting them right. 



: >o< * •- 



The man who imagines the world owes him a living mistakes 
his own importance in the economy of the universe. The world 
owes him nothing. <>n the other hand, he is indebted to the 
world for the gases and minerals of his worthless body, whichhe 

OUght to settle lor. and (he sooner the hetter. 



11k who thinks for himself, and sometimes thinks wrongly, 
possesses an individuality and self-reliance that constitute sterling 
elements of character that many a saint, schooled in other 
modes of thought, has been lacking in. 



jo OU<R SUNDAY TALKS. 



iprwilfo fp]paen!€!e.w i« «|:e*st 



TaI^HAT'S yours is mine, and what's mine is my 

yjLjK^j own." There is many a truth spoken in jest; 

i^t and perhaps there is none more truthful, or 

more often spoken by married men than that 

we have chosen above for a few words for comment. 

A man and woman enter into joint partnership 
for life. Say each brings to the partnership some little 
means — just sufficient to obtain a humble start in the 
world. Perhaps they buy land, and by hard work, in 
time, obtain a competency. All of this time the husband 
handles all the company funds, and generally doles 
out to the wife, grudgingly and eomplainingly, such 
pittances as she may absolutely need for her personal 
use. As a rule, she works more hours, and performs 
more hard manual labor, in proportion to her strength, 
than does her husband. This is evident from the 
fact that he grows strong and robust, while she shows 
the signs of toil and care, and is often broken down in 
health from overwork and child-bearing before she 
reaches middle age. Not a dollar of all their joint 
earnings can she call her own. If she wants a little 
money never so much, she must explain to him all the 
whys and wherefores, and render a strict account for 
every cent expended. 

What is the result of all this unfairness ? We could 
cite numerous instances where wives and daughters have 
had to resort to a system of petty larceny to obtain 
what was justly their due — actually picking the pockets 



SUN'DAt TALKS. 



of the husband and father at convenient opportunities, 
and following up the practice for years. Who can 
blame them? and yet what sort of effect must such 
practices naturally have upon the children of such 
parents? Cases are not rare where the mother, driven 
through the parsimony of the husband to steal in 
this manner, has 'branded the bias and purpose of theft 
upon the soul of her unborn offspring'. 

But some one may ask, Isn't the husband the natural 
head of the family, and hence the proper judge of their 
needs? We answer, that the wife is entitled by right 
to her proper share of the company earnings, and to be 
treated as an equal in the family. If she chooses to 
leave her share in his hands for investment, as most 
wives would, that is her privilege. What we insist 
upon is that she shall have such portion of the joint 
earnings as she may need, without question. Indus- 
trious wives are generally safe bankers. They will 
economize and save in a hundred ways that a man 
would never think of. They never spend their money 
in saloons, nor for cigars, nor do they bet on horse 
races. They can certainly be trusted with their own. 

We will venture to suggest what w r e regard as the 
true policy in family finances: First, the wife should 
have a weekly or monthly allowance, proportioned to 
the value of her services as housekeeper and the amount 
of the husband's income. The children, also, as soon 
as they arrive at a suitable age, should have their 
separate allowances, from which they should be expected 
to clothe themselves and defray all of their personal 
expenses. This would teach them business principles. 
They would soon learn to economize — to live within 
their means, and get something ahead. The fact of 
-ion carries with it a sense of responsibility and 



7^ OU<R SUMO AY TALKS. 

dignity. By this arrangement the home would be 
exalted, and the family relation made more harmonious 
and attractive. It is humiliating to a sensitive woman 
to he always obliged to crave as a favor what she feels 
in her soul is hers of right. 

Consider these things, O, ye skinflint husbands! 



..(((•.♦ofr—,— ,,)),, 



$psaissr^ 



;i.^MFATURE, in her varying moods, is to-day a 
'if<sAjk merciless tyrant, and anon a gentle and loving 
' y <?f> v * mother. We look upon the track where the 
Jl fierce -cyclone has spent its fury, leaving death 
j| and destruction in its path; we mark the wrecks 
I that bestrew the shore when the wrath of the 
waves has subsided; we look down into the pleading 
eyes of the dying babe; ami in all this apparent 
inharmony we can discover naught but cruelty — cruelty 
without a motive, without one redeeming trait. If 
there is an intelligent purpose in Nature — a guiding 
hand in the universe, that holds the stars in their 
course, and commands the elements to do its bidding, — 
as we are taught to believe, and as no mortal can wisely 
deny, — why, we ask in vain of our own souls, was this 
violence and cruelty necessary? Why are the elements 
permitted to rend and lay waste? Why the blighting 
winds to sap the budding harvests, that famine and 
death may ravish the homes of the poor? Why is 
helpless infancy and inoffensive manhood made to 
endure the torture and anguish of affliction, while 
multitudes less worthy are permitted to live upon the 
mountain top of health and happiness? 



OU'R SUM(DAZ TALKS. 73 

Again, we look abroad in the world, and behold, 
where lately swept the mad cyclone the wild flower now 
turns its gentle face to the sun, and the bobolink builds 
its nest in the fragrant grass; where the billows, lashed 
into madness by the fierce tempest, hurled the venture- 
some sailor to swift destruction, the cooing ripples now 
kiss the white pebbles at our feet; and from the pillow 
of anguish, where pain and suffering long held high 
carnival among the nerves of helpless innocence, there 
now distills the precious balm of roseate health, and the 
child walks forth again to blissful companionship with 
the birds and flowers. 

We cannot understand these things. They are 
beyond our reach; and it were vain to try to reconcile 
them with our narrow ideas of the eternal fitness of 
things. They must forever remain among those hidden 
problems concerning which we can only speculate, and 
the solution of which, if ever, must be when man has 
" climbed the golden stair," to bights of wisdom and 
intelligence vastly beyond that which he now occupies. 

We must accept the fact of Nature, with all her 
apparent cruelty and injustice, and it were folly to 
complain. Isn't it really better to think that what is 
incomprehensible to us in our present state, will 
sometime or other be made clear; that Nature's seeming 
indifference to us, and even her apparent mistakes and 
cruelties, are all parts of some plan and purpose, which, 
if rightly understood, would seem divinely grand and 
beautiful ? May it not be that the storm and the 
tempest, the lightning and the earthquake, are essential 
to the unfoldment of Nature's truer harmonies, or even 
to the existence of life itself; that sorrow, suffering and 
death, are all important factors in the problem of life 
and happiness; and that when the veil shall fall from 



74 



OU'li SUN 'LAY TALKS. 



our eyes, and the clouds shall lift from our souls, we 
shall learn to realize that it is all for the best V 

Ought we not to school our minds to this faith, while 
at the same time we are ever endeavoring to discover 
what Nature means, and seeking to know more ami 
more of her secret mysteries? In this faith we believe 
life may be made to yield its best results, and human 
duty will become a pathway strewn with (lowers. 



.SZ=2)&y<y<#r<2^L . .js 



Work. — The Scriptural injunctions to "take no thought of the 
morrow," and to "sell all that thou hast and give to the poor," 
were prohably never intended to be lived up to strictly; Lrat rather 
that one should not set his whole heart on worldly gain, and 
should give as liberally as his means will admit to relieve the suf- 
fering and misery which everywhere abound in the laud. Work is 
an absolute necessity for a healthy condition of body and mind; 
and whoever works with a purpose must take "thought of the 
morrow," and extend his plans into the future. Idleness is the 
mother of vice. Constant physical labor is the only reliable pro- 
tector of virtue. There is nothing that subdues the passions and 
keeps tin' blood tame like hard work. It is a hundred told more 
effective than prayer, as the experience of the Church and the 
world abundantly proves. Not that we would underrate prayer, 
which in its true meaning is au aspiration — a desire — for some- 
thing better. Life should be a constant prayer, lint prayer is 
not of the least aeeount without works. The Lord helps those 
only who help themselves. All nature is governed by lived and 
unalterable laws. Whoever lives in harmony with these laws wdl 
be happy. Blessings flow in fixed channels. To enjoy the bless- 
ings we must go where they are — they will never come to us. 
Work, if you would reap the richest rewards of life. Work, if you 
would live in the sunshine, and enjoy the fruits of contentment. 
Work on and work ever, hoping, trusting, and growing into the 
full development of an upright, noble and glorious manhood. 



ou<k sum 'Day talks. 



71 



j^gggr^^istg) ten ipii&is&rj&e* 



4 



we have somewhere said in these "Talks," 
people differ most concerning- those things of 
1 which they know least; and, generally they 
really wrangle and quarrel only about what 
bey positively know nothing. The subject is 
f worthy of further consideration. 

A demonstrated fact admits of no controversy. No 
intelligent persons ever quarrel about the sphericity 
of the earth, or the law of gravitation that holds the 
planets in their courses. There was a time when, with 
less knowledge, they were ready to break each other's 
heads over all such propositions. As knowledge in- 
creased in the world the once common causes of 
disagreement disappeared, and new and more remote 
causes appeared, and are continually appearing, so that 
there is seemingly no end to the subject. 

It is doubtless a part of the great plan that man shall 
have something to quarrel about, otherwise he would 
never arrive at truth. It is the nature of unfolding 
intellect to seek controversy. Without the attrition of 
mind with mind resulting therefrom there would be no 
intellectual growth. Man would stagnate and relapse 
into a condition of mental torpor scarcely in advance 
of that of the brute. The trouble with him is to 
discriminate between the knowable and the unknowable, 
in the matters he is disposed to differ about; and yet, 
perhaps, the very lack of such discrimination is his 
salvation. Otherwise his capacity for knowledge would 



yd OU<R SUM® AY TALKS. 

be circumscribed and Iris intellectual powers dwarfed 
thereby. 

Man must forever be reaching outward and upward 
into the realm of causes — ever grappling with the secret 
problems of nature and of his own existence — no matter 
whether the solution of said problems is within his 
grasp or not. To give up trying to solve them would 
be to be false to his own divine, outreaching nature. 

Therefore, the central thought which w T e desire to 
impress upon the minds of all who find in these " Talks " 
any food for reflection, is, that we should gracefully 
accept the fact of our many and varied phases of 
disagreement — in other words, that we should "agree 
to disagree," and make the best of it. We should 
endeavor to realize, in thinking our neighbors fools for 
not believing as we do, that they, likewise, are sure that 
we are fools for not seeing things in their light. 

We should endeavor to appreciate the fact that belief 
is the result of conditions of mind not always under 
the control of the judgment, — religious belief especially, 
which deals, of necessity, more or less with the 
unknowable. This fact should make us charitable and 
tolerant of the opinions of others. It should teach 
us our insignificance as factors in the universe of souls. 
It should cause us, in the domain of uncertainties, to 
feel our way cautiously. It should divest us of all 
dogmatism and narrowness of soul, and improve, refine 
and ennoble our ways of thought. 

Thus shall we grow in those intellectual and spiritual 
graces which adorn and exalt manhood, and bring us 
nearer and nearer unto the likeness of the Divine. 



Theee is no credit in sobriety to one who dislikes the taste of 
liquor, nor in purity of life to one who has never been tempted. 



OU'R SUMCDA/ talks. 77 



JSpsriwcj 3||0i?tiistgg4 



•■'"'TIT 1 



||HE joy of a Spring morning melts over a waking 

world. The air is cool and soft with exhaling 

• moisture, and balmy with the breath of many 

it flowers. The sunshine that tides over the 

I eastern hills and pours its effulgent waves of 

] glory down upon the plain below, breaks into 

golden ripples among the verdure of forest and field. 

From a thousand bird throats, from the lips of the 

opening rose, from the diamond eyes of the dew-drop, 

from the great heart of Nature throbbing with life and 

love, bursts forth an anthem of gladness to the new born 

day. How calm and beautiful is our Mother Earth — so 

old. and yet so fresh and fair. 

Upon such a morning as this, with the soul in tune 
with Nature's diviner harmonies, one can hardly realize 
that discord and inharmony exist in the world — that 
hate finds a lodgment in human breasts — that man could 
ever he at war with man. All Nature is full of beck- 
oning hands and welcoming voices, inviting man to 
a truer and higher life. She says to him from the 
heart of the rose, Be beautiful in soul as I am, and 
fragrant with the aroma of good deeds. She calls to 
him from mountain bights of eternal snows, saying, 
Be white and pure as I am, and warm in heart as the 
fires that glow down deep in my own bosom. She 
speaks to him from the towering oak, hoary with the 
breath of centuries, Be strong and firm as I am, and 
deeply rooted in manly principles, that shall withstand 
the shocks of time and the blasts of adversity. In 
gentle rain and warm sunshine, that bless alike the 



7 8 OU<R S UN 'LAY TA L K S . 

growing corn and the useless weed, she says to him, 
Give as I give; be broad in your charities; be liberal 
and grand. She calls to him from rippling stream, 
from deeply-flowing river, from broad ami restless ocean: 
— she urges him by hints, prophecies and warnings; 
she appeals to him through the laughter of children, the 
blush on the cheek of innocent girlhood, the cooing of 
the turtle dove to its mate; she pleads with him in the 
heart-throes of anguish, in the decrepitude of old age, 
in the faint whispers of the dying; — she invites him by 
every impulse of her own great heart— by every noble 
aspiration of his own soul — to come up higher — to live 
a nobler and truer life. 

And vet how few there are who heed Nature's admoni- 
tions or profit by her lessons. With thoughts and eyes 
bent earthwards, they never see the stars that shine 
forever in the " blue vault of night " above them. They 
grovel among the slums of earth-life, in a realm of 
unworthy thoughts and desires, rating up garbage 
instead of golden grain. They think meanly of their 
fellows, and act meanly towards them, and thereby 
they grow mean and narrow in their own natures. 
With no broad outlook upon human life and duty, but 
wholly wrapt up in the mantle of their own selfishness, 
they live on husks until old age creeps upon them, and 
they find themselves fattened with emptiness. If there 
is a pitiable thing in all this universe more pitiable than 
another, it is a human being nearing the land of 
shadows, with a heart barren of generous impulses— a 
life crowned by no starry garland of noble deeds. 

Who that reasons— who that would live in the upper 
story of his own marvelous being, and get the best out 
of life and its experiences —can look out upon Nature 
in her peaceful and gentle moods, and not feel her silent 



U <k S U M'lJA / TAL K S . yg 

influence distilling like a sweet incense through all his 
soul? 

Let us resolve to gather wisdom from all thai we are 
and are a, part of — from every surrounding circumstance 
and condition of life and death — laying' up some -olden 
stores of character, some precious treasures of soul, 
with every experience, against the bleak Winter whose 
outlying- and bordering Springtime tills the measureless 
Beyond. 



Our Spideb A. Tale with \ Moral. -Snugly ensconsed with- 
in a rail of manuscript, in fir northeasl upper pigeon hole of our 
desk, there Lives a Little brown spider, scarcely as Large as 
mon house fly. Every night it conies out from its Little nest and 
spins a large, beautiful web, — which, every morning, we ruthlessly 
brush away. For two full weeks have we tried to exhaust the 
patience of this little insect, but without avail. With its house in 
ruins, and bankrupt in all save perseverance, it patiently goes to 
work to repair the Loss. From every indication our little intruder 
intends to "light it out on that line," as lung as Life and instinct 
shall last. Feeling somewhat in a moralizing mood, we propose 
to deduce a Lesson from the example set by our little insect toiler. 
Where is the person who, in the face of such oft-repeated misfor- 
tunes, would have the heart to struggle on? Would he not sit 
down and bewail his hard fate, and suffer the grim specter, Want, 
to enter in and become a guest at his fireside? An individual 
struggling manfully and cheerfully against misfortune is a noble 
spectacle. The face may be sunbrowned, and the hands sinewy 
with toil, yet the real diamond of the soul shines all the brighter 
for its rough setting. He is twice a man who has struggled with, 
and come off conquerer over, some great sorrow. No one can 
truly appreciate the blessing of health who lias never Languished 
on a bed of sickness; neither can one fully realize how much of 
heaven it is possible to enjoy on earth who has never felt the 
pangs of hell in his spirit. The lesson of the spider, then, is one 
of patient industry, it teaches us to do our best, and then if 
misfortune comes, to "try again," and to keep on trying, patiently, 
hopefully, trustingly, as long as life and strength shall last. 



8o U<R S UN'DAY TA LKS. 



ipapiwieir amf Ifaoi^ag^ 



ff||j|F all the forces in the universe of spirit or 

matter, — forces that play upon the emotions. 

~7^f\ or actuate humanity in any way— there is none si > 

X potential in its influence as the all-conquering 

S power of love. It is alike the solace of tired 

f hearts, and the motive that moves the universe. 

How wonderful is it in all its varied phases; — parental 

and conjugal love, that holds the world of humanity in 

its orbit, and makes existence possible, — social and 

fraternal love, that binds society into indissoluble bonds, 

making existence tolerable, — self-love, that inspires 

ambition, linking the higher loves into a chain of 

strength and beauty, and making them more effective in 

moulding and binding character into lasting shapes of 

harmony and grandeur. 

The world would indeed be a stupendous beargarden 
a vast den of snarling monsters, who would in the 
end devour each other and become extinct, — but for 
this magic balm from the pharmacy of heaven, distilling 
ever softly and gently among the sterner and baser 
purposes and passions of the soul, and the cruel and 
selfish instincts of undeveloped and unspiritualized 
human nature. It is as though the doors of Heaven 
had been left open, and from thence was wafted the 
fragrance of all joy and gladness to inspire humanity 
with the motives to a truer and diviner life. Show us 
the soul wherein love is not, and there we shall find one 
in which all the divine chords of being are out of tune 
— a heart in which the baser impulses are found running 
riot and making: sad havoc and inharmony with the 



OU'k SUN'bAt TALKS. 



entire being. There we shall find misanthropy souring 

and poisoning the sweet springs of life, — selfish greed 
trampling out gentle charity and even humanity's self, 
— unsated ambition that scruples at no means for the 
attainment of its ends,— anger, revenge, hatred—de- 
mons all — rankling in the sacred places of the soul, 
and making it a dismal cavern for the abode of unholy 
things. 

Human life, however grand in intellect, or self-reliant 
in the majesty of its own powers, must have something 
to lean upon, especially in its hours of trial that come 
to all. Without some gentle outreaching of the affec- 
tions; without the clinging and twining of the heart's 
tendrils to and around some other life or lives, with its 
inflowing solace of compensating gladness, as the 
reward and counterpois of such tender outreachings 
and yearnings, life is indeed a dreary desert waste— a 
sky without a sun— a night without one smiling or 
redeeming star. It is then duty becomes a pathway of 
thorns to be trodden with aching heart and bleeding 
feet. The bright sunshine, the overarching sky, the 
melody of brooks and birds, the wooing of fragrant 
zephyrs, the myriad lips and forms of grand and glorious 
Nature, voice no sound of gladness to that gloomy 
soul. It moves on sadly and silently amid the shadows, 
until at last life itself grows to be a burden and a curse. 
But when love flashes its divine rays along the way, 
then every burden seems light, every task a living joy, 
and duty becomes a pathway strewn with flowers. 

•-A new commandment I give unto you," said the 
Great Teacher, '-that ye love one another." Here is 
the sum and substance of all religion. It is the crown 
and glory of manhood— the guerdon of life everlasting 
— the shining pathway to the shirs. 



^"YaYsITH the spread and growth of materialism in 
^jrjlilfl the world, coupled with the increasing- diffi- 
'W* ♦ culties in the way of meeting the demands of 
life — demands often fictitious and exacting, — 
T we find a growing disregard for life itself. And 
f this is not at all surprising. Without the hope of 
something beyond — a reasonable assurance that this 
stage of existence does not bring us to the end of the 
journey — the man overwhelmed with trouble, and 
feeling himself no longer of any use in the world, very 
naturally concludes that the best disposition he can 
make of himself is to cpiit, and close out his con- 
tract with existence. From his standpoint of thought 
he reaches conclusions wholly in accordance with the 
natural deductions of reason. But does he not reason 
from false premises ? Assuming that he does so reason 
there seems to be a necessity for something to anchor 
him more securely to life and duty ; and there can be no 
anchor so firm as the assurance of another life. Such 
an assurance seems to carry with it an awakened sense 
of obligation to this life. It tells us that we have a 
work to do here, and that if we shirk that work in any 
way it will be worse for us there. And then it is the 
dread and uncertainty of the nature of that life — " what 
dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal 
coil, must give us pause," and induce us to stay by this 
life as long as possible. 

We have no sympathy with that cold, calculating 
philosophy that robs man of all hope of a future life, 



and leaves him stranded on the bleak shores and shoals 
of- time. It is then he becomes a fit subject for despair. 
Groping- in the dark of his own obscured hopes he 
loses faith in himself. He turns his eyes earthward 
among the shadows and he sees no light in the gloaming 
— no beckoning hand in the distance. If he would 
only look the other way how changed would all things 
appear. 

How often do we have occasion to say to some soul 
bowed down with a great sorrow, or overtaken by some 
great affliction, Be brave and strong, and don't give up 
the tight. What! surrender life, with all its possibilities 
of growth and grandeur. How much better to go down 
with face to the foe and with colors nailed to the mast. 

And this is the spirit in which we should grapple with 
existence. If trouble comes — if foes to body or soul 
assail — place your back to the wall and face them 
bravely, determined to conquer or die trying. If they 
come of your owu folly and inviting, the greater the 
need for prompt and decisive battle that shall leave you 
not only victor but wiser. With every effort to conquer 
there comes support from without and from within. 
There are Bluchers in reserve in every heart-struggle, 
ready at the word of command to hurl their legions 
upon the foe in your defense. Resolve to live, and live 
to some noble purpose. Never surrender, though the 
powers of earth and air combine against you, and hell 
yawns at your feet. 

This is the path of duty, to watch and to wait, trusting 
the G-ood Father for what we can not clearly understand. 
Full soon will come the wintry frosts of age — the 
bowed form — the hesitating step— the trembling hand. 
Already, with many of us, the shadows are falling and 



U <R SUN 'LAY TA LKS. 

lengthening toward the east, and the night cometh on 

apace Let it not be a night of pitiless gloom, but one 
fringed with the glory of a coming day. 



)T takes a large amount of knowledge, grounded 
in a solid substratum of common sense, to 
enable a man to say, " I don't know." There 
are so many people who claim to know, but who 
T actually know so little or nothing of what they 
\ pretend, that it is indeed refreshing to meet, as 
we do occasionally, with a great, big-hearted, honest 
doubter — not one who doubts captiously and dogmatic- 
ally; but one who modestly doesn't know, and knows 
that he doesn't know, and isn't ashamed to own it. 

All conscious human life is a stupendous interrogation 
point. It questions everything — the stars, the air, the 
earth, the sky. It looks down upon the blade of grass. 
the dew-drop sparkling in the sunbeam, the mole 
burrowing blindly under the ground, the beetle hiding 
among the clods, the corn ripening in the Autumn 
haze. It peers into the wondering, staring eyes of the 
new-born babe, and notes the far-off, vacant look of 
the dying. It sees wrong and sin reveling in luxury, 
and honest merit out at the knees and elbows. It 
dissects down through the tissues of the body, and 
searches among the secret springs and recesses of heart 
and brain. It traverses the realm of thought, emotion, 
passion, will. And it is eternally asking, Wherefore ? 
Wherefore ? What does all this mean V It coins its 
questions into verse: 



OU<k SUNDAY TALKS. 8j 

Eternal Truth! Oh, why does the wail 
Of the innocent burst in anguish sad? 

Oh, why does the wrong in pomp prevail, 
And the right in penury's rags go clad? 

Tell me, ye twinkling orbs of night, 

That jewel the skies with golden gems. 
Do beings dwell in thy realms of light? 
Are their brows encircled with diadems'? 

Relentless Death, Oh why dost thou nip 
The tender dowers, the young and the fair, 

And dash the cup from the spirit's lip, 

That the tempter, Hope, hath lifted there? 

Thou mystic river, when time is o'er, 
And we drift on thy dreary tide away, 

Will our barks e'er reach the other shore? 
Will our spirits wake to a brighter day? 

Will the phantoms of bliss that elude us here, 
And hopes that charm in their dazzling sheen, 

Be ours to possess in that blissful sphere, 
With never a yawning gulf between? 

And so we go on, ever questioning, and hoping, and 
outreacbing towards the light, and wondering if the 
day will ever come when we shall see and know. Thrice 
happy he through whose inner consciousness comes 
some satisfying answer, bringing with it an abiding, 
restful trust — a voice that shall break in waves of 
gladness over his doubting soul, saying — 

Perhaps: but wait till this mortal night, 

With its shadows of doubt, shall fade away ; 

All things shall seem in that better light 
As never they did in thy house ot clay. 

Then shall the vanishing hand of Time 

Eemove from thy heart all doubts and fears, 

And the chastened soul to bights sublime, 

Shall rise from the mists of thy mortal years. 

And in this faith we must rest — if not wholly content, 



OU'R SUNDAY TALKS, 



at least we should school ourselves to be reasonably 
satisfied therewith, until we can obtain the better 
knowledge — till " faith shall be swallowed up in sight," 
and death shall be lost in victory. 

Therefore, we give joyful welcome and all hail to any 
system of religion or philosophy that helps to lift man 
out of his doubts, and to place his feet upon some rock 
of assurance — whether of faith or assumed knowledge, 
—assurance in the satisfying belief in a hereafter; that 
eternal progress is a law of being, and that the time 
will surely come when the labyrinthian maze of doubt 
and ignorance, through which we are groping here, shall 
open out into a way where we shall see all things 
clearly; where all clouds shall disappear, all riddles shall 
be solved, and where we shall know. 



t--*--W2i^-)> C »{-%} &V~-r~> 



#ia • 9tape» 



1 



/Jj YlYJHERE is no sight more beautiful than that of a 

^'^-A^ man or woman who has passed the meridian of 

*^f* life, with locks whitening in the frosts of years.. 

j[ and with face turned towards the setting sun, 

% growing old sweetly and gracefully. There 

I ought to be no such thing as old age, except in 

a physical sense. Years should bring wisdom to the 

mind, and growth and grandeur to the soul, but not age 

to the heart. That should be kept ever young and fair. 

It should become more and more beautiful and fragrant 

with Spring blossoms as the years roll away. 

But there is so iniich to make ns old in spirit— so 



U<k SUNDAY TALK S. 8y 

many cares and heart-aches, so much work and worry, 
so many losses and disappointments— that we grow old 
and tired, and lose our youthful freshness and fragrance, 

oftentimes, ere we are aware. 

In the morning of life our ships sail away to unknown 
seas, well ballasted with hope and ambition. We reek 
not that a thousand dangers await them. They en- 
counter storm and tempest, tierce cyclones, treacherous 
currents, sunken rocks. Unless staunch and true, and 
well manned with a resolute crew, they soon become 
drifting wrecks, or go down beneath the engulfing 
waves. How few return to us freighted with the rich 
invoices of character which constitute the soul's true 
wealth. We sought for earthly treasures— treasures of 
worldly gain, social position, gratified ambition — and 
our ships return to us empty laden. And then the 
shadows of disappointment and blighted hopes gather 
over us and turn the fresh Springtime of our lives into 
cheerless Autumn. It is thus we grow old, wrinkled, 
and gray, in spirit, and the outlook grows darker as we 
near the end. 

The end ? Rather should we not say the beginning V 
And what a beginning! But even were this life the all 
in all of being, and there were no individualized 
conscious existence beyond, then how sad and unsatis- 
factory indeed would be such an ending. Why, if we 
lived as we ought— if we made our ventures cautiously, 
and with a view to those imperishable treasures of heart 
and soul that survive the ravages of time, instead of 
seeking so entirely after the fleeting and fading things 
of earth,— life would grow richer and sweeter as the 
evening advances and its shadows lengthen. Profiting 
by every experience— by every burden and heart-ache, 
every mistake and failure,- we would gather strength 



and beauty with our years, and then we should approach 

the goal as calmly and softly — 

"As fades the Summer cloud away. 

As sinks the gale when storms are o'er, 
As gently shuts the eye of day, 

And dies the wave along the shore." 

It takes but really little to make a man happy, if lie 
only knows it! The trouble with most people is they 
don't know it. They imagine that certain factitious 
circumstances in life — certain wealthy conditions and 
surroundings; the ability to outshine and outrival in 
that hollow mockery of life, fashionable society; that 
these are the cargoes our ships should bring back in 
order to give us happiness. There never was a graver 
mistake. True happiness must come from within, 
and it needs but little from without to make it reasonably 
complete. 

When this lesson is well learned and profited by, 
then are we but prepared to live. Then shall we know 
no such thing as age, save in that gentle decay of 
physical life that even adds a charm and a zest to the 
higher enjoyments of the soul. And thus it is that 
when this life is most complete that we are best prepared 
to lay it down and take our chances with what follows 
— confidently believing that if it is truly well with us 
here it will be all right with us there. 






In proportion as labor-saving machinery supplements muscle in 

tin work of the world there will naturally lie a decreasing demand 
for labor unmixed with brains; hence, the laboring man should 
learn to master the machine and not let the machine master him. 



OU<k SUN® AY 'TALKS, 



^cntantjeflblsnsj^ ^«0 ^cni'Iiijitag. 




l^-YTY-HE difference between having something and 
~lSk$ having nothing, is usually the difference be- 
tween saving and wasting. There may be 
exceptional cases, arising from physical disa- 
bility, or mental incapacity, but there are hardly 
enough of them to vitiate the rule. 

It is indeed true that some people are born to wealth, 
and hence need not trouble themselves much about 
temporal things. It is a great misfortune to one to be 
thus born ; for he is denied the soul growth and strength 
that comes of striving. Rich men's sons are proverbial 
for their uselessness. Although they may inherit a very 
fair stock of elemental character, it is apt to be sjDoiled 
in the shaping. Society pampers and dawdles them, 
until they grow vain, proud, and conceited with an 
importance that they do not possess. And then, in the 
great world of work and use, they become of no more 
Consequence than a Prince Charles poodle in the 
economy of a stag hunt. A man needs to struggle with 
the bard conditions of poverty to bring out the best 
there is in him. The world's masters and heroes of 
to-day — its men of brains and energy — sprung from 
humble beginnings. 

But the great mass of mankind are born to toil; and 
it is well they are, or in the onward sweep of time 
humanity would soon gravitate to the lower forms of 
life whence it sprung. It is to this toiling class — the 
hone ami sinew of society — the honey-gatherers of life's 
busy hive — we wish to direct our " talk " to-day. 



go U(R SUNDAY TALKS. 

Why is it that we find so many people in the world 
without homes, or other earthly possessions — people of 
intelligence, culture, and of industrious habits. Many 
who have reached the meridian of life — good people — 
temperate people — lay by nothing from year to year 
against the 'rainy day of sickness, or the gray winter of 
old age. Whatever their income they manage that it 
shall not exceed their outcome; and they are generally 
to be found in a chronic condition of "hard up." 
They evidently believe in having a good time as they 
go along. In a certain sense they are right; and yet. 
how much more of solid comfort could they not obtain 
out of life if they had only managed, during their years 
of earnings, however humble, to lay by something for a 
snug little home they could call their own. 

There is no poor man, of ordinary industry, but that 
has his times of prosperity. He obtains a good paying 
job, occasionally, or enjoys a season of extra remunera- 
tive wages. But instead of improving the occasion 
as a starter for a home, it is made the means for a 
larger measure of present gratification. 

A hard-working mechanic will frequently scpiander for 
beer and tobacco, or in some other foolish gratification , 
a whole day's earnings; and his wife wdl make herself 
wretched if she can't have as nice a bonnet as is wo a 
by the wife of old Moneygrubs across the way. It isn t 
so much what a man earns or spends that makes or 
breaks him, as it is what he saves. It is his determination 
always to calculate upon a little margin for the family 
sinking fund, which shall be sacred from spoliation. 

Poor people, with nothing to depend upon for a 
subsistence but the labor of their hands, are foolishly 
blind to their own truest happiness when they seek to 
imitate the follies of the wealthy. It can only be done 



OUfR SUNDAY TALKS. qi 

at a sacrifice of that independence of character and 
individuality of manhood and womanhood which consti- 
tute the bulwark and casemate of every individual soul. 

When a man has learned to live within his means, and 
lay by a trifle for emergencies, even though he has to 
wear his coat out at the elbows and his shoes out at the 
toes, and can snap his finger in the face of society and 
say, "I don't care for your nonsense/' he becomes a 
moral hero of whom the world should be proud. And 
the woman who, in her own sweet simplicity, can wear 
a calico dress, and be happy and independent, while her 
next door neighbor indulges in silks, has mastered one 
of the most difficult problems of existence, feod bless 
such people, say we. We wish there were more of 
that kind in the world. 

Not that we would disparage any adornment that 
adds to the beauty and symmetry of " the house we live 
in " — the divine temple of the human soul. But it 
should be dune from a love of the beautiful in one's 
own soul, rather than from any vain desire to shine in 
the eyes of a foolish world. And then such adornments 
should always be made secondary to comfort; and never 
should they be indulged in beyond what one's means 
will reasonably warrant, nor at the exj^ense of that 
peace of mind, without which all else is a hollow mockery. 



The amount of vitality wasted by young men in smoking 
cigarettes, would, if properly applied, enable them to lay such 
lasting foundations of character as would give them a prominent 
place among the world's heroes, statesmen, orators, poets, 
painters, law-givers, and even editors. But as it is they smoke 
away their brains and turn out noodles. 



Q4 OU'k SUM 'DAY TALKS. 



.trcuMtgiln iiSwMerlwg^ 



jHERE is a beautiful eastern legend that has 



T ^js!^ found expression in many languages.' It relates, 
^f* that Sandalphon, the Angel of Light and 
yi Glory, standing at the gates of the Celestial^ 
X City, gathers the fervent prayers and heart- 
f longings of sorrowing humanity, as they ascend; 
they are turned to flowers in his hands, and their 
fragrance is wafted throughout the abode of the im- 
mortals. A faithful and striking allegory this of a great 
law of compensation in human suffering. 



While " sickness and sorrow, pain and death," is 
the common lot of mortals; yet some there be who 
seem born to more than their share of ills — if that may 
be called ill, which, in the process of spiritual unfold- 
ment, becomes a means of growth and strength. There 
are some natures so finely tuned, and so sensitive to the 
discords and inharmonies of life, that they suffer keenly 
from causes that would scarcely disturb the equanimity 
of others. They feel the rough blasts, and shrink from 
the cutting frosts, when hardier and tougher natures 
would withstand the shock with scarcely a sense of 
weakness. One is the sturdy oak — the granite rock; 
the other the sensitive plant— the fragile, but rare and 
sparkling crystal. 

Nature's estimate of the value of a man is his capacity 
for suffering, and the effect that suffering has upon 
him. If it fails to sweeten, purify, and ennoble his 
life, it is because he is composed of base metal, which 
turns into dross in the furnace heat of affliction. This 



OUfc SUNDAY TALKS. 



93 



is the diamond drill that tests the value of the entire 
lode of human character. It is the ladder that reaches 
to the skies, up whose shining nights all true souls are 
ever ascending. Suffering is as essential to soul-growth 
as earthly food is to the development of the physical 
body. The heart that has never been bent to the rack, 
nor felt the lacerating thong of some great sorrow, has 
missed the emblazoned way to true happiness. " For 
our light affliction," says St. Paul, " which is but for a 
moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory." And thus the sorrows of the 
present become the joys of the future— are turned to 
flowers in the hands of the good angel that waits for us 
at the pearly gateway of the skies. 

The common mishaps, troubles and sorrows of life, 
have their uses in harrowing and fertilizing the soul, 
and thereby preparing it for a better harvest of good 
thoughts and noble deeds,— just as the farmer upon 
virgin soil oftentimes finds it necessary to destroy the 
brambles and weeds by fire in order to prepare the land 
for the blessed corn. Human life needs fallowing with 
a keen plowshare to prepare it for the golden harvest— 
the luscious fruitage. And the richer the soil the 
greater the necessity for careful and thorough culture, 
to guard against the rank growth of hurtful things ever 
ready to creep in and choke out the precious plants. 

What tired and patient soul, approaching the gentle 
rest of death, with calm resignation and unclouded 
trust, and looking back over a life of many cares and 
sorrows, but feels to rejoice in every pang it lias suffered 
— in every tear it has shed? It would not, if it could, 
have borne or endured a single sorrow or heart-ache 
less. Even in this life, with all grand souls, do not their 
trials and struggles turn to flowers, exhaling the sweet 



g 4 OU<R SUNDAY TALKS. 

fragrance of beautiful thoughts to bless and enrich the 
world ? 

Of all the grand inspirations of genius that have 
marked the eras of human history, and left their impress 
upon the monumental records of time — in literature, 
art, song, invention, — the grandest and best have been 
born of heart-throes of which the world has little 
dreamed. From altars where souls have bled, and 
brows have been pierced with crowns of cruel thorns, 
have leapt forth lightnings that have thrilled the world. 
and marked a shining pathway for other feet to follow. 
From Gethsemanes of anguish and tears have been 
voiced lessons of charity, of gentle humanity and love r 
that have awakened slumbering echoes in benighted 
souls, the world over, that shall reverberate through all 
time. 

Tired hearts, suffering souls, ye who have borne the 
burdens of cruel wrongs, and trodden the thorn}' ways 
of the world with bleeding feet, take heart and hope in 
the thought that the time will surely come when your 
troubles will all be turned to flowers, whose joyful 
fragrance shall exhale in blessings and gladness forever- 
more. 



One true friend, to whom you can go for sympathy and succor 
in your hour of sorest need, and feel in your soul that your 
dearest confidence will never be betrayed, is worth more to you 
than a million sunshine flatterers, who fawn and smile, and dance 
around you, in the days of your prosperity. 



Suffering brings strength to strong minds, makes pure souls 
purer, ennobles noble hearts, and lifts elevated natures to heights, 
sublime. 



OU<R SUN(DAY TALKS. gj 



S.rOih^& ®«a^r$|* 



j'Y^N all ages of the world intelligent humanity 
everywhere has puzzled its brain over Job's 
query: " If a man die, shall he live again?" 
And, as in the science, philosophy and religion 
X of his day, Job found no answer to his question, 
] and was inclined to believe, with " the Preacher," 
that in aught that pertained to an existence beyond this 
life, " man hath no pre-eminence above a beast;" so, a 
vast multitude of the sons of earth, to-day, are disposed 
to accept Job's view of the matter, and with him to say: 
" As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth 
and diweth up, so man lieth down and riseth not: till 
the heavens be no more, they shall not awake nor be 
raised out of their sleep." 

It is claimed by the materialist that the idea of 
continued existence is the outgrowth of education; that 
the desire for such existence is unnatural, and has no 
place in the mind, except as it is implanted there by 
erroneous teaching. And nature, at the first thought, 
seems to bear him out in his conclusions. We find man 
and the higher forms of life below him, to be very 
nearly the same in physical structure. There is the 
some muscular, arterial, osseous and nervous systems. 
The blood is of the same color, and it is re-charged 
with oxygen in the same way. Life is sustained by the 
same process in the one as in the other. And then, 
leaving the domain of the physical, he finds much in 
the mental nature that is similar in kind — affection, 
memory, locality, calculation; and sometimes he finds 



o6 OUfc SUNDAY TALKS. 



manifestations of intelligence trenching so closely upon 
the human that it is difficult to define the difference. 

Following this strictly physical and mental similarity 
between the so-called dumb brute and the human being, 
the scientific materialist points us to types of savage 
life scarcely a grade above the higher simian forms, and 
the believer in immortality, by faith or otherwise, is 
puzzled with the question, " At what point in the scale 
of being does the capacity for immortality begin?" 
Other perplexing questions arise as to the nature of that 
part or element of man for which religion claims an 
eternity of existence. Is it an individualized entity? 
Has it shape, memory, passion, will ? "Where does it 
dwell and how does it exist? In short, what is it? 
And then if man only is immortal, would not the hunter 
be lost without the companionship of his faithful hound 
— the Arab without his trusty steed '? 

It would be entirely foreign to our purpose in these 
"Talks" to attempt any elaborate discpiisition upon 
these or any other questions. We aim rather to catch 
a few practical and pointed thoughts on each theme we 
attempt to consider, and impinge the same upon the 
consciousness of our readers — not always so much by 
way of instruction as to arouse thought in their minds. 

Now, there is no intelligent materialist but will admit 
that there are phases and phenomena of mind which 
are entirely inexplicable upon any known theory of the 
laws of matter, and which certainly strongly indicate 
that this life is not the all of being. Take, for instance, 
the fact of somnambulism, showing the operation of 
mind independent of its usual channels of communica- 
tion; mesmerism, demonstrating the power of one mind 
over the mind and body of another, operating, often, at 
long distances; clairvoyance, elairaudience, and the vari- 



OU ( k SUjNVAY TALKS. 07 

ous and well attested phenomena of modern spiritualism, 
all "foot-falls on the boundaries of another world," 
and pointing to an almost positive affirmation of Job's 
question. 

And then again, admitting that the desire for con- 
tinued existence is the result of education, the capacity 
for such educated desire inheres only in man, and not 
at all, as far as we know, in types of animal life below 
man. Because man desires immortality may be no 
evidence or argument that his desire will ever be gratified. 
At the same time, we notice, that in the material world 
nature aims to perfect whatever she undertakes. Why 
should she leave her grandest work — the intellectual 
and spiritual nature of man — all incomplete, with its 
longings and out-reachings all unsatisfied, its unfold- 
ment but just begun ? Man lives here but a little while, 
learns some few things imperfectly, and is cut off just 
upon the threshold of that development that he feels he 
is capable of, and ought, in the purposes of his being, 
to be allowed to accomplish. Denied this, he feels 
that he would be made an unfair exception to the 
creative law of the universe, and be rebels against the 
thought in every atom of his being. 

But, whether man lives again, or not, he is tolerably 
sure of an existence here. He should make the most 
of his present opportunities, and get all the good out 
of life he possibly can; and this can be done only by 
doing the greatest possible amount of good to others. 



Mothees who worry and fret, and scold and borrow trouble, 
about what they cannot he^J, only make themselves miserable, 
without securing any compensating benefit. 



fen Hbrafc "^I^Cn»i0ag?3p;e0[ Hit* 



)T is not to be wondered at that men and women, 
with keenly sensitive natures, often become 
cynical and morose, if not wholly disgusted 
with, and tired of the world. There is so much 
to worry and annoy such natures — so much 
inharmony and rasping discord to contend with, 
that they find themselves incapable of bearing up under 
the burdens of life. Especially is this the case where they 
are obliged, for physical sustenance, to enter the lists 
in the competitive struggle for bread. To be jostled 
against and misunderstood by coarser natures, pushed 
aside and crowded to the wall by brawnier muscle, and 
to see the morsel that should have been theirs seized 
upon and devoured by the grasping and greedy crowd, 
is not calculated to sweeten one's disposition — unless 
one is so schooled in the philosophy of life as to be 
able to accept all things as for the best. 

Life is too short to enable the most thoughtful mind 
to fully comprehend the situation — to take in and 
realize, much less to analyze, its relations with the 
universe and with itself. Man opens his eyes for a 
little while on a wonderful panorama of field and sky, 
of ocean and desert, of marvellous manifestations of 
intelligence and strange conflicts of ideas. He finds 
himself a conscious and sentient entity — an atom cling- 
ing to a globule of condensed nebulae, whirling through 
the mighty voids of space. His abode is one of the least 
of untold millions of similar globes, and for aught he 
knows he may be least among the vast hosts of 
conscious atoms peopling the same. He opens his 



OU(k SUMO AY TALKS 



eyes upon all these marvels, catches hut a bare glance 
of things, and then the curtain falls, the show is ended, 
and the spectator goes to his long home. 

In all this brief and flitting glance, — but nevertheless 
to the man of thought and culture, a broad and 
comprehensive view of the universe of mind and matter, 
—and especially in his apparent littleness, and in the 
inferior quality of his fellow atoms, he sees and realizes 
his own insignificance in the great universal plan, and 
he is led to exclaim, with Job, " What is man that Thou 
shouldst be mindful of him ? " This sense of littleness 
and inferiority — a feeling all unknown except to truly 
noble souls — is apt to prey upon a sensitive nature until 
the man actually comes to think that he is of no possible 
account in the world; and then, when brought into 
disagreeable and unavoidable contact with rude and 
ignoble natures, as he inevitably must be, the result is 
often more than he can bear. He loses his grip, as it 
were, and misses the glorious opportunity for spiritual • 
and intellectual unfoldment which life affords. 

We pity the soul who finds no joy in the world — who 
sees only the shadows, and never basks in the glorious 
sunshine. It is a soul out of tune with the real har- 
monies of nature. For though nature has its dark 
sides — its clashing inharmonies, — it has also its realms 
of gladness — its divine melodies. And misguided in- 
deed is that man or woman who dwells perpetually in 
the one, and never seeks out or learns the joys of the 
other. 

We insist that the true theory of life is to make the 
most and best of it, under all circumstances and all 
conditions. To endeavor to right the wrongs of society, 
to help the " weary and heavy laden" on his way, to 
speak the gentle word that carries peace and rest to the 



OU<R SUNDAY TALKS. 



troubled soul, to bless the widow and the fatherless in 
their affliction, to admonish the erring- in the spirit of 
charity and love, to make the moral wastes of the world 
to blossom as the rose, — in all this and more, man can 
find no time to grow cynical or sour — no moment when 
he may not be adding to the stature and glory of his 
own manhood, and fitting himself more and more for 
that life which we believe will bourgeon and blossom 
for him " within the vail," forevermore. 

:©3e^=»_£;? *^I&{& 

After All. — Society is so accustomed to weigh men by their 
success in acquiring property that many a man counts his life a 
failure who, dying, leaves no stores of earthly treasures for his 
heirs to quarrel over. Never was there a greater mistake. A 
man's coin value is really his lowest and meanest value. Wealth 
is often his ruination, generally his curse, and always a source of 
annoyance and care. The acquisition of a reasonable amount of 
property — enough to ward off the possibility of want in old age — 
is both desirable and commendable. But that once obtained, and 
absolutely assured, life, surely, has other objects that are infinitely 
nobler than the continued piling up of wealth. Many a man, 
with the acquisitive faculty largely developed, gathers in wealth 
for the purpose of doing good with it, and after scattering kind- 
ness and sunshine all along his path, manages to come out about 
even in the end. Such a man has lived to some purpose, and we 
doubt not has got out of life more solid happiness in each month 
of his existence than ever Moneybags obtained from his dollars in 
his whole lifetime. The only true measurement of a man and the 
highest standard of his valuation, is character. If he bears about 
him the genuine article stamped and registered in the mint of true 
manhood, he is rich, and never otherwise. Many of the greatest 
benefactors of the world — the master minds whose names will go 
down to remotest time — never had time to acquire worldly riches; 
and yet they are the Kothehilds, Stewart and Astors, of the world 
of soul. What is the use,- then, of wasting one's best energies for 
what one really does not need? For after all, life is a success or 
failure only in proportion to its accumulation of those treasures 
of heart and brain that endure forever. 



OU<k S U M (DA / TALKS. 



3p:eirtsiBla&^^ g$el£*<!Eos*:ce$£» 



jSjjjjHERE are main' excellent people in the world 
"^;lJl^ who will confidently tell us such amazing things 
of Deity— of His majesty, power, purposes, 
j,[ laws, — and have such confidence in their ability 
'"; to influence or persuade Him in matters that He 
I might possibly overlook or forget, — that one 
would naturally conclude they must be on terms 
of peculiar intimacy with the Creator. This is a harm- 
less species of self-conceit. s«> long as it is dominated 
by a sincere desire for the highest welfare of humanity. 
We care but little what kind of theology a man believes 
in, provided he is actuated and permeated by genuine 
love for his fellow men. He may claim that the universe 
was created in six days or six thousand aeons; he may 
locate the time and place, and believe that the human 
race obtained its start by a special creation of a perfect 
pair in the Garden of Eden, or that it ascended, by the 
slow process of evolution, from a mollusk or a monkey; 
he may think he knows that the first created pair fell 
from their high and holy estate through the wiles of a 
mischievous being who succeeded in circumventing his 
and their Creator:— he may believe all this, and as much 
more, or less, as he can find it in his nature to believe; 
but if his heart is warm with the divine impulse of good 
will to man, he is our friend and brother. We have no 
quarrel with him. Indeed we can respect his opinions 
for his sake, and for the good there is in him. 

Bul independent of all this assumed knowledge, and 
all of the marvelous riddles and hidden things of the 
universe, concerning which we can only speculate and 



theorize, there are some important facts — all-important 
for humanity to know — that are plainly within the reach 
of human knowledge. We know there is a life principle 
permeating - matter, and pushing upward and outward 
into countless forms. Whether this principle inheres in, 
and is a property of, matter, solely, or is a something 
behind and independent of matter, is not essential to 
our welfare or happiness. The central fact of the 
existence of such a principle can no more be questioned 
than we can question the fact of our own existence. 

In the operations of this principle, or law of matter, 
as some prefer to term it, we notice that it is ever reach- 
ing out through nature for the best. It is never satisfied 
with inferiority or mediocrity; but, through all the 
countless cycles of time, is ever experimenting, as it were, 
and trying and re-trying to produce something better and 
better. The air we breathe has undergone wonderful 
changes, since the earlier geologic eras, and is capable 
of sustaining vastly superior forms of life now to what 
it could then. This is evident from the crude and 
extinct forms of vegetable and animal life folded away 
in the coal and chalk beds, or that have left their impress 
in the older rocks. 

We trace humanity back along the line of human 
history until we see man emerging from the mists and 
shadows of antiquity, a mere savage, brutal and ignorant 
— a dweller in caves, and clad in the skins of wild 
beasts — whose highest ambition was carnage and con- 
quest. We see him to-day crowned with the garnered 
wisdom of the past, sitting as king over new realms of 
thought, with the prisoned vapors of the cloud and the 
tamed coursers of the storm obedient to his call. 
Hence, we conclude that man is no exception to Nature's 
progressive law — that he is undergoing a process of 
intellectual and spiritual growth and unfoldnimt that is 



OU'R SUNDAY TALKS. 103 

limited and circumscribed only by eternity on the one 
side, and bis own infinite capacity on the other. 

Realizing this fact, and that Nature is ever calling to 
man by her myriad voices to come up higher — to ascend 
the scale of being to a companionship with his higher 
ideals — what sort of beings ought we to be? Who, with 
such possibilities before him, would be content to grovel 
in the muck and mire of an ignoble life, and feed on 
husks and garbage, when he has but to put forth his 
hand to pluck the golden fruits of paradise ? 



'".yiyjRAIN up a child in the way he should go," said 
• ^A3 the wise man, "and when he is old he will 
t 1 not depart from it." That depends somewhat, 
f [ Solomon, on the kind of child you undertake 
to tram up. We have seen children, under the most 
strict and careful training, go to the bad in spite of 
every wholesome restraint; while others, who have come 
up without much of any training, have turned out to be 
good and useful men and women. Thus, we believe a 
great deal depends upon the inherited tendencies and 
qualities of the child, as to whether or not it will walk 
in the way it is trained to go. It is a well understood 
law of nature that like begets like, and that children 
are very apt to inherit the moral weaknesses and imper- 
fections of their progenitors, and especially are they 
apt to be endowed with inharmonious and badly 
organized natures as the results of the ignorance or 
indifference of the parents concerning the laws governing 
the ante-natal conditions of life. 



io4 OWR SUNDAY TALK S. 

No man or woman bearing- the taint of scrofula or 
consumption in their blood, or who can not control 
their own natural tendencies to evil, should ever repro- 
duce their kind, — no man addicted to the intemperate 
use of liquor, opium or tobacco,— no thief, nor gambler, 
nor murderer;— unless they would perpetuate their own 
evil propensities in the world, and add to the sum of 
human misery. 

Now, as to the training up of children in the way they 
should go: The first and most important qualification 
is for the parents to take Josh Billings' advice and " go 
that way themselves." The proper method of correcting 
children is one most difficult to learn. The nature and 
temper of the child must be thoroughly understood; for 
what will benefit one may ruin another. The rod is a 
necessary implement of family government only with 
those parents who do not know how to govern by better 
and higher methods. The old adage, " Spare the rod 
and spoil the child," had its origin in an age of semi- 
barbarism, and in a false idea of parental discipline. 
Many a boy, driven away from his home by parental 
cruelty, has gone forth into the world with all filial love 
crushed out of his heart. The blow that, arouses anger. 
or deadens the love of a child for a parent, is an 
unfortunate one, and should never be given. No child, 
with any proper degree of spirit, and a fair amount of 
intelligence, that has arrived at years bordering on 
manhood or womanhood, will tamely submit to physical 
chastisement. Of course there may be natures so barren 
of the better promptings and impulses of humanity, 
that the infliction of physical pain is the shortest way 
to their consciousness. But even in such cases we seri- 
ouslv question whether the shortest is the best way. 

The most successful horse-trainers are those who 
make the least possible use of the whip; The mind of 



U'R S U M'i)A / TA LK S. 105 

the young child may be influenced in like maimer, by 
gentle persuasion. Before arriving at years of discretion, 
it may be encouraged by rewards in ways of well 
doing, and checked by gentle restraints from its per- 
verse purposes. The children of parents who use the 
rod unsparingly, and who do not run away from home 
as soon as they are able to take care of themselves, are 
generally noted for their stupidity and worth lessness. 

The family bond of union should embrace every 
member of the household. Children should he made to 
realize that in all the wide world their parents are their 
best friends. They should learn to confide in them, 
and to love their homes. But it is only the outreaching, 
tender hand of parental love that can call forth this 
love in the child. Anger, petulance, fault-finding and 
cruelty, will never do it. Mothers who scold and fret, 
and fathers who beat and bruise, surely can not realize 
the mischief they are doing. 

If a son or a daughter manifests a disposition to 
go astray, take them, father, mother, to your loving 
arms and heart, and gently and tenderly teach them the 
better way. If this will not save them nothing on earth 
will. The memory of your tender care and loving 
counsels they will never forget. It will cling to them 
through all their future years, like the whispered words 
of a dying mother's prayer, — ever prompting and guid- 
ing them in the right whenever their wayward feet would 
go astray. 

Here is the secret of all true parental government. 
And it is this principle that constitutes the chief factor 
in all human reform. It is Omnipotent love working 
through humanity. It is the key to heaven. 



It doesn't hurt a ^ood wife to praise her occasionally. 



io6 OU<R S UNI) AY TALKS, 



fW»^a£?i. 



jjpHEKE is no more suggestive or beautiful sight, 

to our eyes, than that of an elderly married 

"SIS' cou pl e > who, trustingly and lovingly, together 

*& a- have walked the rugged ways of life, from 

\ f youth to old age; and now, hand in hand, and 

heart to heart, are patiently and hopefully waiting upon 

the hither shore of time for the sound of the boatman's 

oar, that shall bear them across the silent river. 

We look back along the dim vista of years to the 
halcyon time of life's sunny morning. We witness 
their plighted vows at the altar, and see them go forth, 
in the pride and glory of their young wedded lives, to 
the toils and struggles of existence. Many a Godspeed 
and kind word of cheer fall upon their ears, as they go 
out from beneath the parental roof-tree that is to shelter 
them no more, forever. Before them lies a new world 
of experiences— of joys and sorrows— of grand suc- 
cesses, and perhaps of sad failures. But strong of 
purpose and resolute of will, and with life's sky rose- 
tinted with the flush of dawn, they move on, and enter 
upon this, to them, all unexplored world of experiences. 

We see them later established in their new home. 
Perhaps it is a log cabin in the wilderness, with 
neighbors few and far; or maybe a cosy little cottage in 
some distant town. The husband is bravely bending 
every energy to the task of mastering the hard condi- 
tions of life— of carving out a home and a name in the 
world, and securing, if possible, that independence 
that shall relieve them from the possibility of want. To 



OU ( R SUN 'DAY 'TALKS. icy 

the wife's once rosy cheeks has com,e the pallor of the 
dreadful agonies of maternity; but now her eyes are 
bright with a new hope, as she caresses the tiny form 
that nestles in- her bosom. 

And then come added cares and heart-aches as the 
years glide away. I see them, with streaming eyes and 
pleading lips, bending over the couch of their darling 
one, as its little life nutters away in the short gasps of 
dissolution, and its eyes grow dim under the touch of 
Death's icy fingers. But anon, time pours its gentle 
balm into their wounded hearts, and the bitter trial and 
loss, which they thought they could never endure, fades 
away into a tender memory. 

Again we behold them, and as in the long ago they 
went forth into the world, now their own noble sons and 
daughters, burdened with the unsolved problems and 
untried responsibilities of life, follow in their footsteps; 
and soon their home is left unto them desolate, save in 
the companionship of their own chastened souls. Well 
for them now if they find within themselves treasures of 
culture and character that shall supply their dearest 
need. Well for them, if schooled in that beautiful 
philosophy that enabled St. Paul to say: " I have fought 
a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the 
faith," they, too, can feel in their souls that they have 
done the best they knew, and that now they will trust 
the good Father for all that is to come. 

The shadows stretch away in lengthening lines toward 
the cast; and now they are calmly watching the glories 
of the coming sunset — the sunset of a well-spent life. 
How grand they seem, in the fruition of their years, 
with their silvered hair glowing in the sunset's golden 
gleam. Their faces are radiant with a divine hope that 
beyond the bars of the shining west the beckoning arms 
of their loved ones are outreaching towards them to 



■OU<R SUNDAY TALKS 



welcome them to their home of eternal rest and love; 
and that in a few more days, or years at most, they will 
pass on, as one weary with the burdens of the day, 
" gathers the drapery of his couch about him, and lies 
down to pleasant dreams." 



ISSttJH Cnf Ipae^f* 



Iffl 



^IjllllLESSED be the man that invented sleep," said 
•^'■jLjfcj Sancho Panza; but thrice blessed he, say we, 
"~Fttf\ who invented Sunday. To be able, for one 
\l glad day in seven, to cast aside all business 
care, and to find a brief surcease from the tur- 
moil, the excitements and the worry of life, is 
surely a priceless boon to humanity, and one 
that the great Christian world does not fully appreciate. 
While we are no Sabbatarian in the religious sense of 
the word — believing that all days alike are holy, as 
Nature is holy, and that all are made for the profit and 
unfoldment of halting, struggling, and yet really pro- 
gressive humanity, — still we are deeply grateful for the 
institution of the Christian Sunday. And for the sake 
of those who especially venerate the day, and for our 
own sakes, we would make it as free from all secular 
pursuits as possible. Neither would we permit any who 
choose to devote the day to pleasurable enjoyment in 
any mauner to disturb the quiet and religious devotion 
of those who believe that a special sanctity attaches 
thereto. 

Of course there are many necessary pursuits of life 
where the observance of Sunday as a day of entire 



OU'R SUM ( DA/ TALKS. log 



cessation from physical labor is either impossible, or 
would work a serious detriment to the laudable work of 
the world,— such as the navigation of the high seas, 
railroading, and many mechanical pursuits where cessa- 
tion of labor would work serious waste. 

And here we see and recognize the fitness of the 
idea that " Sunday was made for man,"- -that is, in 
the nature of things, the day must necessarily be 
made flexible to fit the inexorable and unyielding 
circumstances of humanity. These exceptions to the 
observance of Sunday should cause no uneasiness to 
religious people, and do not with those of any breadth 
of thought. They need not have the slightest appre- 
hension that the day will ever be turned into one of 
general business, or lost in the whirl or waste of the 
world. It trenches too closely on man's necessities 
ever to be cast aside. On the other hand, it will grow 
upon the world just in proportion as society becomes 
enlightened, and the improving conditions of humanity 
will permit. 

And so, while we may not fully subscribe to the 
reason of the pious poet for rejoicing for the gift of the 
Christian Sabbath, nevertheless we are not so bigoted 
as to be unwilling to join with him in the glad refrain— 

" Welcome sweet day of rest — 

That saw the Lord arise: 
Welcome to this reviving breast. 

And these rejoicing eyes." 



A soft, low word, in kindness spoken — a radiant face beaming 
with love and sympathy— are dews from heaven, distilling sweet 
hope and courage to weary-ladened hearts. 



OU<R SUNDAY TALKS. 



^fif^ses Ifsr^i '$£&?&&&*%&.. 



M^trlO the young man just entering upon the stage 



(ji^-A^ of active life, and who ought to be forming a 
character that shall constitute a sinking fund 
against the emergencies of life and the ravages 

!■ of time, we have a few words to say. 
In the first place, my young friend, you must 
learn the hard lesson that if ever you expect to amount 
to anything in life you must work for it. If nature has 
given you a capacious brain, that is your good luck, for 
which you should be thankful. You should modestly 
accept the gift, and set yourself at the task of improving 
the same. Nature turns out her diamonds always in 
the rough. The polishing and cutting are the work of 
man. On the other hand, if Nature has been less 
bountiful with you, then the greater the necessity for 
harder work. .Many an inferior quality of brain, by 
energetic application has been made to evolve a high 
order of manhood. 

You should first endeavor to find out what you were 
intended for, and then direct all your energies in that 
direction. Many a good mechanic Las been spoiled 
under the mistaken notion that lie was best fitted for a 
professional life; and many a tine brain has been 
deprived of advantages that, if propeidy improved 
upon, would have given a genius to the world. And 
once on the right track turn neither to the right nor 
the left; and above all, work — work early and late — 
work with a will that will brook no denial or defeat. 

He who would win must struggle for the prize. He 



OU'k SUJfDA/ TALKS. 



can find no time for idleness, dissipation or folly. He 
is supplied with a certain amount of vitality — none too 
much. He lias not a particle to waste in foolishness of 
any kind. Are you aware, ray friend, that that cigarette 
to which yon seem so devoted, uses up fully ten per 
cent of your vital force — of your capital stock of energy '? 
It deadens the resolution in your will, paralyzes your 
nerves, and relaxes your grip, as it were. Throw it 
away, and resolve that forever more you will he master 
of the situation, and that no such untidy or debilitating 
habit shall hold you captive at its feet. And then your 
occasional dissipations and late hours, they consume 
another large percentage of your vitality; and ere you 
are aware you find a habit of indolence and indifference 
stealing over you, and your ventures bring you no 
return. 

" But," do you ask, "would you deny young people 
all recreation— all pleasure ?" By no means; but we 
would have you to realize that there is no true pleasure 
in aught that hurts or degrades. Work may be made 
a pleasure and a joy when it leads to success. An 
earnest, clean life, may be made a perpetual recreation, 
in the pursuit of simple duty. You can not afford to 
waste your golden moments — the sweet springtime of 
your years — in frivolity and nonsense. You should pick 
your companions, if possible, from those above your 
intellectual level — from those who can lift you up, not 
pull you down. At the same time you should be 
reasonably unselfish in your endeavors to lift up those 
who are beneath you to your level. When you find 
that you can be no longer of any use to your companion, 
nor he to you. cut loose from him — kindly but effectually. 

And -so, bravely and manfully, bend your young 
energies to the work of character-building, determined 
to be a man among men. Your own <>-ood sense should 



OUR SUM'bAY TALKS. 



teach you the right way — what is necessary for your 
soul-growth — for your highest welfare. Old age will 
creep upon you so quickly that you will wonder what 
has become of the fleeting years. Your golden oppor- 
tunities, one by one, will slip through your fingers, 
unless you watch them closely, and you will find your- 
self, with whitened locks and bowed form, standing 
upon the margin of life's swiftly-flowing river, another 
failure. 

O, thrice happy he, at such a time, who can look back 
over a life well spent, and can feel as he goes out into 
the unknown, that he carries with him a bank account 
of soul that shall last him for all eternity. 



"S&t tlteir 



ril^HO that has read " David Copperfield," that 
^lff||jfl|t incomparable creation of the master's pen, 
..^|c can ever forget Steerforth, — the wild, reckless, 
,£ wicked Steerforth, — and yet with such streaks 
of grand manliness running through his char- 
acter as to make him at times almost a god. 
In his last interview with Copperfield, he said 
to him, with the memory of all their old friendship 
welling forth in his heart: "Daisy" — the pet name 
he called him by — " Daisy, if anything should ever 
separate us, you must think of me at my best, old boy. 
Come! Let us make that bargain. Think of me at my 
best." 

May not this tender pleading of the wayward Steer- 
forth find a response in other hearts — in all hearts who 
read these lines, — and may it become their rule of 
action through all the coming years. How much better 



OU<k SUJVDAY TALKS. 113 

would the world be for it if men and women thought 
only of each other at their best. How it would stimu- 
late all souls to live only their best, and aspire to be 
worthy the best thoughts of their fellows. We look 
upon the cold an 1 silent face of a dead friend or 
acquaintance, and with hearts aglow with tender pathos, 
we remember only his good qualities. His virtues 
shine out brightly and beautifully, eclipsing whatever 
of fault, or weakness, or vice, there may have been in 
his character. Why should we wait till the winter of 
death sets its icy seal on heart and lips, before we are 
ready to think the kindly thought which is as ennobling 
to ourselves as it would be to the one on whom it is 
bestowed. 

The human race is yet in its moral and spiritual 
infancy. It is slowly but surely struggling up the 
heights. On every hand are the foot-sore, and weary, 
and faltering. Some are borne down with heavy burdens 
that have been transmitted to them by an ignorant and 
sinful ancestry. Others seem recklessly squandering 
the golden hours and opportunities of their lives, and 
thereby making for themselves beds of thorns for their 
future years. But if He whom the record informs us 
" spake not as man spake," could say to the erring one, 
"Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more," 
wherefore should the best of us frail mortals presume 
to sit in judgment upon our fellows ? Can we fathom 
the mysteries of the erring soul, or weigh the motives 
that prompt it to action ? 

The great want of the world is charity and good will 
to man. There is something of the best in every life ; 
and this is the plant we should nurture with the 
tenderest care. Then let us begin to think of each 
other " at their best." It is thus thai the wilderness of 
human nature can be made to blossom as the rose. 



114 GLEANINGS. 



flp;eatrd«gpgs< 



A born rogue is the hardest kind of a rogue to reform. 

Life is too short to waste any one of its golden moments in 
anger. 

Truly honest minds do not differ as widely as they are apt to 
think they do. 

Only men who are scoundrels at heart ever countenance dis- 
honesty in others. 

Selfishness is essential to good government and the truest 
welfare of society. 

The use of tobacco and whisky should be regarded as justifiable 
grounds for divorce. 

Taxation without representation is as great a wrong to woman 
as it ever was to man. 

A sweet disposition, in man or woman, is a jewel outshining 
the rarest of earthly gems. 

The man, in this age, who selfishly lives for himself alone, was 
bom ten thousand years too late. 

" Self preservation is the first law of nature," in a moral as 
well as in a physical sense. 

The thief who steals my cloak has no right to my coat, and it is 
not sound morality to give it to him. 

The world is wide enough for people to disagee in without the 
necessity for breaking each other's heads. 

In starting out in political life every young man should be 
quite sure he is right before he goes ahead. 

It is better for laboring men to have steady employment at low- 
wages than to work one-half the time at high wages. 

He who lives meanly will naturally think meanly, and act meanly; 
and meanness of any hind is unworthy a noble soul. 

The teacher who cannot call forth the love of his pupils is 
incapable of accomplishing much success in his profession. He 
has mistaken his calling. 



It is better to be born right the first time than to take any 
chances on the possibility of getting right afterwards. 

Eight-hour laws are a blessing only to such persons as are 
capable of making a good use of their unemployed time. 

The man who tries to lift himself up by pulling any fellow- 
being down, is a long way back in the process of evolution. 

Thk evil that some unbalanced natures do is, doubtless, from 
their standpoint of reasoning, the right thing for them to do. 

If the people do not want to be burdened with the support of 

criminals, paupers, and tramps, they should quit raising them. 

The human being who hasn't a tear in his heart for another's 
woe, is undeserving of human sympathy in his own extremity. 

He serves God best who best serves his fellow men. ("Borrowed 
from the teachings of our elder brothers, Confucius and Jesus.) 

Evil doers can be reformed more quickly and effectually by 
encouragement to do right, than by condemnation for their evil 
ways. 

Poverty and riches are but relative terms — gauzy figments of 
the brain. He only is poor- who is poor in soul, and he is poor 
indeed. 

Parental love and tenderness will do more to restrain the 
wayward feet of an erring child than all the harsh measures ever 
devised. 

Theke would be scarcely any jostling in the journey of life if 
everybody would but observe the law of the road and "keep to 
the right." 

Before you conclude to do your neighbor an injury, consider 
well whether it would not add more to your own hajipiness to 
befriend him. 

The soil is the common heritage of the race, and no man 
should be allowed to hold any more of it than he can use to the 
greatest good of himself and the greatest number of his fellows. 

If eternal progression is not an unerring law of nature, then the 
history of the rocks is a stupendous falsehood, — and if it is such 
a law, then the nebulous theory of creation is a foregone con- 
clusion. 



He who marries a pretty face alone, will be apt to see the time 
that he will "even wish that he were dead." 

He gets the greatest satisfaction, often, out of life, who does the 
largest amount of attending to his own business. 

It is far more creditable for a young lady to earn her own 
livelihood by some respectable vocation, than to marry some rich 
fool for the sake of a home. 

The husband who begrudgingly gives to his wife what is as 
much hers as his, is deserving of a wife mean enough to steal from 
his purse while he is asleep. 

The man who sneers at the honor of woman, or who boasts .if 
his success in any ignoble department of physical life, is a beast. 
( A Ye beg pardon of the beasts.) 

The world's real thinkers, who are comparatively few in num- 
bers, are oftentimes misunderstood, and crucified by those who, as 
of old, "know not what they do." 

All punishment for crime should be corrective and reformatory; 
and the duration of imprisonment should be made contingent 
upon the reformation of the criminal. 

In view of the low standard of political morality in this "land 
of the free and the home of the brave," Providence is apt to be 
on the side of the party having the deepest purse. 

The attempt to live in a hundred dollar style on a fifty dollar 
income— a prevailing weakness of the American people— is a 
source of more misery than intemperance or war. 

The best service most rich men can render to the world is to get 
out of it and give somebody else a chance. (This does not refer 
to the rich man who turns his wealth to noble uses. | 

As the child cannot learn to walk without some stumbling, 
neither can there be any soul-growth without some mistakes: so 
it is better to grow and stumble than never to grow at all. 

The man or woman who has no well-spring of joy within— no 
resources of philosophy whence to derive consolation when 
trouble comes has failed to profit by the hard L< ssoiis of life. 



GLEANINGS. 117 



A kind act performed without the hope of reward in this world 
or the next, is a better evidence of true gentility of soul and a 
genuine Christian character, than a belief in all the creeds of 
Christendom. 

The pampered daughter of luxury who turns up her nose at an 
honest, industrious mechanic, or worthy laborer of any kind, may 
see the time when a five dollar gold piece will look bigger to her 
than a cart wheel. 

The (unsophisticated young man who wagers his money with a 
professional gambler at cards, with the idea that he has the least 
chance to win, exhibits a degree of verdancy that would pass for a 
fair article of idiocy. 

If the acquisitive faculty was the highest faculty of the human 
brain Providence would have located it in the arch of the temple, 
and not crowded it off among combativeness, secretiveness, and 
the other animal faculties. 

We often commit a great mistake in withholding our good 
opinions of those we love until after they are dead, and then 
inscribing upon their tombstones the approving words their hearts 
hungered for while living. 

As man ascends the scale of being he will take less and less 
delight in all sports or pastimes that inflict pain upon dumb 
brutes. He will find his enjoyments in those higher delights of 
the soul that exalt even as they gratify. 

The man who demands a single civil, social, or political privi- 
lege for himself that he would not accord to his wife, mother, 
sister or daughter, possesses the rudimentary principles of a 
tyrant, although he may not think so. 

Providence seldom troubles itself much about the welfare of a 
man who does not put forth every effort in his power to take care 
of himself. And yet He no doubt has a cordial hatred for the one 
who makes his own welfare the exclusive aim and end of existence. 

When the Great Teacher said, " It is easier for a camel to go 
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the 
kingdom of God," he probably knew what he was saying. At the 
same time he doubtless never intended to be understood as 
intimating that there was any virtue in poverty. 



GLEANINGS. 



The man who does not grow wiser and better as be grows older, 
has no business to be here: and the sooner death catches him out, 
the better for the world. 

The rapid march of invention, during the last quarter of a 
century, has so revolutionized our systems of labor as to make the 
readjustment of man to the soil and to the sources of subsistence 
a necessity. 

Poyeety and riches are only relative terms. They are to a large 
extent figments of the brain — creatures of the imagination. He 
only is poor who thinks himself so: and no one is truly rich who 
is not rich in soul. 

The man who thinks it no wrong to defraud the State, — either 
by evading the payment of his just proportion of taxes, or by 
receiving from the government what is not justly his due, — possesses 
all the elements of a first-class thief. He needs but time and 
opportunity to develop a high order of faculty for highway robbery. 

Getting religion, with some people, is a good deal like getting 
the measles or whooping cough. They are taught that it is some- 
thing that can come to them from without only in a peculiar way, 
and in a certain attitude of body and nrind; when, in fact, all 
there is of it of any appreciable use to humanity consists simply 
in erasing to do evil and learning to do well. 



♦» — <s&4&-.-*» 



POEMS. 



ll P O K M s gr- 



SIGHT. 



irii^HE sun upon his purple pillow rests 
Ijjljlll Behind the western hills. An azure cloud, 
"~~ fringed with the glory of departing day. 
As gorgeous as e'er Israel's legions led, 
Stands sentinel above his royal couch. 
ie by one the golden buds of night 
Unfold their stary petals to my gaze.— 
The constellated armies of the skies, 
A voiceless host, are ever marching on, 
With silent tread and majesty supreme, 
In the high path of heaven's unbounded space, 

The winds are lulled to sleep; 
No sound of rustling leaf, nor insect hum. 
Nor din of busy life, breaks on my ear: 
And yet a melody pervades all space, 
As of unnumbered harps by angels played, — 
Angelic choirs, whose silken fingers sweep 
The silv'ry chords, until the vast expanse 
Seems filled with the soft symphony of Heaven. 
Alone I stand upon the silent heath,— 
A worthless speck upon the object glass 
Of God's great microscope. Unnumbered worlds, 
Whose vastness staggers thought, around me blaze, 
Filling immensity with beams of light. 



'POEMS. 



For what was all this wondrous glory made'.-' 
I send the dove of thought from this frail ark 
That coasts along the shores of time, away 
To yon bright spheres; J charge it penetrate 
The mystery profound, and bring me bach 
Some branch of knowledge from those upper worlds. 
A bootless errand. Wearied with its flight. 
Pack to my longing soul it comes again, 
Bringing no token — leaving all in gloom. 

Mark yon lurid gleam; 
As though a star from its fixed center shot, 
Trailing a fiery shaft athwart the sky, 
Then fading softly into silent naught, 
Leaving the dark more dense. A moment here, 
It flashed across my wond'ring soul; the next, 
Went out in night forever. 

But lo! what splendor breaks upon my sight, 
Paling the stars along the northern sky! 
Now jetting up in streams of rosy light, 
Until the firmament of heaven glows 
And flashes with supernatural fire! 
Now from the zenith drooping gently down, 
Until the earth with glory is festooned, 
And curtained in with soft auroral light. 

Such are the glorious visions of the night, 
Lifting the soul to higher realms of thought, 
In contemplating the infinity of God. 






'POEMS. a-i 



CLEOPATRA'S DREAM. 



' jilpjiO! by Nilus' languid waters 
~V JiA Fades the dreamy summer day, 
SFi? Where, on couch of gold aud crimsou, 
j f Egypt's royal daughter lay— 

•^ Dreaming lay, while palm and pillar 
^ Cast their length'ning shadows now, 

j Aud the lotus-ladened zepHyrs 

Lightly kiss her queenly brow. 

Soft, the evening steals upon her, 
As behind the curtained west 

Sinks the Day God in his splendor- 
Folds his wooing arms to rest. 

Drowsy shapes of dusky Egypt 

Homeward, slow, their burdens bear, 

While the boatman's lazy challenge 
Falls upon the quivering air. 

Dreams she of her Roman lover — 

He who cast a crown away — 
Country, kindred, fame and honor, II 

In her captive arms to lay? 
Aye! of Antony, her hero, 

Sharer of her heart and throne — 
He whose ships now homeward sailing, 

Bear her all of love alone. 

Starts she in her sleeping glory. 

And her brown arms, jeweled, bare, 
Round and rich in queenly beauty, 

Wildly cleave the slumbrous air. 
Beads of perspiration gather 

On her matchless woman's brow, 
While her parted lips in anguish 

Tell of heart pangs none may know. 



y 



Sure, some vision, dire and dreadful, 

Palls upon her eyes and brain. 
Piercing to her being's center, 

With a fiery shaft of pain. 
Like a sea, her full orbed bosom 

Swells and falls with pent up ire; 
Then her spirit breaks its thraldom, 

And she shrieks in wild despair: 

Charmian, quick, unloose my girdle, 

Give me breath — I faint, I die! 
Ho! slaves, bring my royal galley, 

Let us hence from Egypt fly. 
O, for vengeance on the traitor. 

And upon his Roman bride; — 
Let him never dare — ah, Charmian. 

Stand you closely by my side. 

Do I dream? Is this my palace — 

Yon my sweetly flowing Nile? 
Ah, I see, — 0, great Osiris, 

How I thank thee for thy smile? 
0, I've had such fearful vision, — 

He, my Antony, untrue; 
And my heart was nigh to bursting 

With its fearful weight of woe. 

But 'tis over; yet I tremble — 

On what brink of fate I stand; 
What prophetic bird of evil 

Hovers o'er this sacred land! 
What if true should come my dreaming. 

And no more my love returns! 
\h! the thought my heart's blood freezes. 

While my brain with madness burns." 



Then she listens, gazing outward. 

Towards a dim futurity, — 
And the Nile, forever onward, 

Bears its burdens to the sea, 
And she catches from its whispers — 

Echoing whispers in her soul — 
That her reign of love is ended, 

And her life is near its goal. 



90 EMS. i i5 



GENERAL GRANT. 



Address of welcome read at a banquet given to General and Mrs. Grant 
at the Auzeraia House, San Jose, Cal., Sept. 26th, 1879. 



f ROM lauds beyond the setting sun, 
: -£l From o'er the vast Pacific main, 
t: ,'!'<>' A nation reaches forth her hands 
fjm And bids thee welcome home again. 

A No empty honors these we bring, — 
'» They symbol heart-beats strong and true, 

For one who bore a nation's trust 
'Mid wreck and peril safely' through. 

And then when Peace her mantle spread, 

Like angel-wing, o'er land and sea, 
To forge our shattered bond anew 

A grateful people turned to thee,— 
To thee to guide the helm of State, 

To lure again the golden hours 
Of trustful confidence elate, 

And hide the nation's scars with flowers 

Whatever trust, wherever tried, 

No duty thou hast left undone; — 
Commanding in thy country's pride 

The laurels thou hast nobly won. 
Then welcome to thy home once more ; 

A million hearts with fever beat 
To know thy journey's safely o'er, — 

Are eager thee and thine to greet. 



i- 4 6 'POEMS. 



THE MINER'S LOT 



rHEKE the snow-covered mountains unfold 
Imy Their crests, like the foam on the wave, — 
-e^Pf By the rivers and streams, in their struggle for gold. 
|)T How many a fonn has gone down to the mold. 

£ The mildew and blight of the grave. 

> One came when the summer was young, 
' And erected his cabin hard by; 

No accents of mirth ever fell from his tongue, 
But o'er his lone pathway the dark shadows hung, 
For he knew that death's portal was nigh. 

WE missed him one day from the spot 

Where loug he had labored in vain; 
With chance and misfortune he struggled and fought, 
Till the life-spring was broken — so hard was his lot;— 

He never will labor again. 



The Yuba flows red evermore. 

As if dyed with the life-blood of toil, 
And the sunset so golden with beauty gilds o'er 
The mountain that casts its dark shade by his door 
Whose spirit would break from its coil. 

No woman is there with her tears, 

Or hand's gentle pressure to chide 
The pain that leaps up through his temples, or fears 
That cluster around his lone heart, as appears 

The shadowy form by his side. 

In the frenzy of fever he pines, 

And his wandering thoughts swiftly stray 
To a little white cottage with clambering vines, 
Now dearer by far than the wealth of the mines. 
O'er mountain and valley away. 



'POEMS. i V 



He hears the soft voice of the stream 

That trills its low notes by his door; 
And the music of birds, with the sun's rosy beams. 
Now melts all his soul into ravishing dreams, 

Like the bliss that entranced him of yore. 

"Zalina, dear queen of my heart, 

Let me breathe out my life on thy breast; 
Forgive the false pride that has kept us apart, 
And rankled so long in my desolate heart, 
With its passions in stormy unrest. 

"Forget all the years that have flown, 

With their billows of anger between; 
Oh, have I not suffered enough to atone 
For the pangs I have caused thee, Zalina, my own?— 

Let distance no more intervene." 

And a voice, pure and sweet in its flow, 

As the star's silv'ry music above, 
Glides over his senses, in accents so low, 
Transfusing his face with a heavenly glow,— 

'Tis the soul's echoed whisper of love. 



By Yuba's red waters he sleeps, — 

The wind's hollow wail is his dirge — 
And the dew, gentle mourner, comes nightly and weeps 
By his grave, while the mountain its silent watch keeps, 

But his spirit is safe o'er the surge. 



t, — ff|:4C-_^» 



NIGHT OF THE SOUL. 




HO' the heavens in blackness may Lower 

O'er earth like a funeral pall, 
f And phantoms of discord and terror 

The hearts of the bravest enthral;— 
Tho' the world he shut in like a curtain, 

And the demons of darkness control. 
No terrors of midnight or tempest 

Can equal the night of the soul, — 

The night when the storm and the thunder 

Heat ruthlessly over our dead, 
And the hopes that we cherished so fondly 

In a heart-burst of agony tied: 
When over the soul's verdant places 

There swept the fierce blast of despair. 
And our idols of gladness and beauty 

Were wrecked and left desolate there. 

Ah! that was a night to remember — 
A season of pitiless woe, — 

When no ray from the inner light streaming 
Pierced the gloom with a scintiliant glow: 

But helpless, and tossed by the billows- 
No harbor of refuge to hail,— 

On the ocean of passion we drifted, 
A rudderless bark in the gale. 

Hut light came at last with the dawning — 

From the depths spake a voice, "Peace, be still. 
And the turbulent billows of anguish 

Obeyed the Omnipotent will. 
The tempest was hushed to a zephyr— 

(him shapes of the night fled away, 
And the sun of the sold, newly risen, 

Ushered in a new hope with the day. 



TOEMS. ag 



ACROSS THE BAR/ 



Inscribed to the Memory of Capt. Francis Connor, lafceof the steamship 
Oregon, plying between San Francisco and Portland. Oregon. 



rinrjfV SHlr ^'led out To an unknown sea 
'' T f-t\} Bound for a shadowy port afar 



"{? 



mi 



Out where the waves of death run high, 
It sinks from our sight across the bar: 



J b Across where the hidden breakers lie, 

Aud the dangerous reefs of time enfold 
Full many a ship with its treasures rare. 
And many a noble seaman bold. 

It bears away from our saddened gaze, 

And the hearts and home of his earthly love, 
The form of a sailor true and brave, 

From the shores of earth to the realm above. 
His barque is freighted with noble deeds, 

And generous thoughts for all mankind. 
And from his soul o'er the water speeds 

A prayer for the loved ones left behind. 

Aud here by the wave washed shore we stand 

"Where the tides eternally ebb and flow. 
"Watching our ships go out to sea, 

Beariug our fondest hopes below. 
But by faith we see the beckoning hand 

Of angels reaching across the bar, 
To welcome our loved ones over the strand, 

To the shining way with its "gates ajar." 



■ The Bar at the month of Columbia River is regarded as the most dangerous of 
any upon the Pacific Coast. Capt. Connor was noted for his skill in making the 



He POEMS. 



SOMEWHERE. 



'VtvIIRED hearts that go life's rugged ways alone, 
i j\ Aj Somewhere, in God's vast universe of soul, 

^tfSf^r? In realms of light, where law and love control, 

iM; * Each one shall find its own 
X Somewhere. 

' O, think not this the all of life, below. — 

Its cares and burdens, agonies and tears, 
That weigh the soul through many weary years, 
Full recompense shall know, 
Somewh sre 

Nature with all her children fairly deals. 

All time is hers, and boundless realms of space, 
And endless means, and ways we may not trace. 

Her purpose she reveals 
Somewhere. 

We may not see the justice of her ways. 

Nor know why wrong prevails, or siu endures. 
Nor why to evil deeds the tempter lures. 

The very doubts we raise, 
Somewhere — 

Will turn to golden fruit; our pray'rs and tears 
Shall blossom into joys, whose fragrance sweet 
Shall make the fullness of our lives complete 

,\inl banish all our fears, 
Somewhere, 

If this were all, and death the final goal. 
And all outreaehing aspiration dies, 
When 'neath the clod the mortal casket lies. 

And dwelleth not the soul 
Somewhere — 



'POEMS. i 3 i 



Then were Nature's purposes in man 

Exceptional to all her perfect ends : — 
Our very being's incompleteness lends 

Failure to her plan, 

Somewhere. 



-@: p ^/p T<v> 



TO THE SIERRAS. 




jrfE snow-capped mountains, basking in the sun, 

Like fleecy clouds that deck the summer skies, 
On you I gaze, when day's dull task is done, 
Till night shuts out your glories from mine eyes 

For stormy turmoil, and ambition's strife, 
I find in you a solace and a balm, — 

Derive a higher purpose, truer life, 

For your pale splendor, passionless and calm. 

Mellowed by distance, all your rugged cliffs, 
And deep ravines, in graceful outlines lie; 

Each giant form in silent grandeur lifts 
Its hoary summit to the evening sky. 

I reck not of the wealth untold, concealed, 
Beneath your glorious coronal of snows. 

Whose budding treasure yet but scarce revealed. 
Shall blossom into trade — a golden rose. 

A mighty realm is waking at your feet 

To life and beauty, from the lap of Time, 

With cities vast, where mllious yet shall meet. 
And Peace shall reign in majesty sublime. 

Rock-ribbed Sierras, with your crests of snow, 
A type of manhood, ever strong and true, 

Whose heart with golden wealth should ever glow, 
Whose thoughts in purity should symbol you. 



i<$t "POEMS. 



DANGERS THAT THREATEN. 



4 



[Read at the Anniversary Celebration of our National liii]e]>emle 
held at Cook's drove, near San -lose, Cal., July 5th, L880. ] 



TTHIN this rural grove inviting, — planned 

(\J||j By him whose name it hears, (now gone before. 
^S* To dwell for aye in yon bright Summer Land, ) — 
We meet to-day our hearts' glad song to pour. ' 
Fair Ceres brings her wreath of golden grain, 

The gladsome hour with plenty here to crown, — 
While Flora smiles in beauty o'er the plain, 
Pomona bends her blushing clusters clown. 

As down the stream of time we swiftly glide. 
Out to the wide, unbounded sea unknown, 

'Tis well, before we stem the silent tide, 

To learn what dangers in our way are strewn. 

"What sunken reefs, what treaeli'rous currents dire, 
What lightnings, leaping thro' the midnight dread. 

What storms portend, what fearful fates conspire 
To hurst in wrath on Freedom's shining head. 

Our patriot sires — peace to their honored manes — 
Who broke the fetters of a kingly power. 

And reared aloft fair Liberty's proud fanes, 
They little dreamed the perils of this hour. 

A faithful, brave and patriotic band, 

With simple tastes, and hearts with Courage strong: 
Before them stretched a mighty waste of la 

Of valleys wide, of lakes, and rivers long. 

They recked not of the surging human tide. 

Outflowing westward to this distant shore; 
They counted not the lust of wealth and pride, 

Ami curse of greed, the future held in store. 



TO EMS. 133 



No cities then with teeming squallor filled, 

No tramps for succor plead from door to door; 

Abundant labor greeted him who willed, 
And plenty blessed the poor man's humble store. 

Behold the change a century has wrought — 
That little band to fifty millions grown — 

A mighty sweep of empire, safely brought 

Through perils vast and hidden ways unknown. 

But now the dangers, thick on every hand — 
Dangers nnthought of in our early days — 

Gather a fearful shadow o'er the haul, 
Dimming the sun of Freedom's brightest rays. 

The thirst for office, power, and earthly gain — 
The wish to reap where one has never sown — 

The wrong that leaves wrecked fortunes in its train, 
And blighted lives to grope their way alone. 

These are the shoals and breakers in our way — 
The threat'ning dangers to our Ship of State — 

The cloud, the storm, the forked lightning's play. 
The warning finger of relentless fate. 

Thus while our hearts now glow with patriot fire, 
Our watch and ward should ever faithful be; 

In every noble way may thought inspire 
To guard the sacred altars of the free. 

Ye noble sons; and daughters young and fair, 

This lesson learn, ere life's bright spring-time wanes, 

That nations live by Virtue's watchful car< — 

In hearts, not heads -in goodness, not in brains. 






m 



POEMS. 



MASONIC SILVER WEDDING. 



Head ;it the Celebration oftlie Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of theorem 
ization of San Jose, Cal , Lodge No. 10, F. & A.M. 



w 



I That sweetly nestles by the western sen, 
evMy Muse in halting numbers, fain would hail 
The prophecy of glorious things for thee. 

But yestereve thy broad expanse of plain, 

From hill to hill, thence to the throbbing tide, 
The wild herd and the wilder nomad claimed, 
And nature reigned in all her untamed pride. 

Then from Sierra's golden fretted streams, 

Went forth the tidings glad that thrilled the world, 

Awak'ning in ten thousand breasts bright dreams 
Of wealth — and Hope her streamers gay unfurled. 

Forth from the busy haunts and hives of men — 
From climes and countries distant as the poles — 

fame manhood in its flower and beauty then, — 
Came where the far oft', wide Pacific rolls. 

By dark ravines, where torrents leap and foam: 
On arid plains, by mountain crests of snow; 

They reared their cabins, made their humble home. 
And delved, and died, to will the prize below. 

But some there were who sought this rural vale. 
Nor from it cared to wander far away: 

No place, in fancy or in fairy tale. 

Could they.e'er rtnd to equal San Jose. 

Here they in peace their household altars reared — 
Here built their temples to the Living God; — ' 

Fair Science, too — her genial light appeared. 
And nature smiled a welcome from the sod. 



'POEMS. 135 



The earth her gladsome 'fruits abundant bore; 

And toil, that never failed its prize to gain, 
With happy homes the landscape dotted o'er, 

And peace and plenty reign o'er all the plain. 

Behold the mighty change that time has wrought! 

A city vast where once the hamlet stood; 
Taste, wealth and culture their rich treasures brought; 

Art writes her triumphs o'er each fertile rood! 

This the faint promise of the Yet to Be — 
Of mightier changes in the coming time, 

When her outreaching arms to Destiny, 
Shall clasp the glory that awaits, sublime. 



Fair as a bride, and beautiful to see. 
In that bright evening of the long ago, 

Crowned by her altars, stood Fkee Masonry, 
Clad in her emblems white and pure as snow. 

Through all th' eventful, intervening years. 

No trumpet tongue her gentle deeds proclaim; 
And yet the orphan's wail, the widow's tears, 

Her hand oft soothes, nor seeks for worldly fame. 

White-robed and pure, her sandal'd footsteps shine 

Amid the silent ways by sorrow led. 
And with a love and charity divine, 

Shesoothes the anguish of affliction's bed. 

A matron now in wisdom and in years, 

With noble sons full grown to man's .state, 

We meet to-day in gladness and in tears. 
Her silver wedding here to celebrate. 






RESIGNATION. 



HAVE said — and I would not recall the words. 

Though all of my future remain unblest, 
That the pathway of thorns my feet have trod 

Was for me of all earthly ways the best. — 

That the wrecks of my hopes that have strewn the shore, 
Like stranded ships by the storm-spent sea, 

Were argosies richer with golden store 
Than all of earth's treasures were to me. 

Had my life been one of indolent ease- 
Had Fortune before me her baubles spread : 

And the empty world, as I sought to please, 
Had it placed its emptier crown on my head,- 

Had the smiles of earth and the bending skies, 
And the pleasures of time that gladden and cloy, 

Had I shared them all in their fullness of sense, 
And nothing of earth were their left to enjoy, — 

Methinks I should then have missed the prize. 

By an infinite waste of barren years — 
The gem in the soul's deep mine that lies. 

And is wrought into shape through toil and tears. 

I ne'er should have found the hidden ore 
Of Truth, whose marvellous golden goal, 

Is only reached through the drifts of life 
By the diamond drill of a chastened soul. 

The truth, that opens the shining way 

Of trustful endurance forever more,— 
And the pathway of duty is clearly lined 

Through the rifts in the clouds to the hither shore. 

And thus have 1 patiently learned to bear 

The burdens and pains of life's unrest, 
Thankful alike for the storm and the calm, 

And hopefully trusting that all's for the best. 



'POEMS. 131 



MY ISLAND HOME. 



r" A mighty realm is the land of dreams, 
With steeps that hang in the midnight sky ; 
There are weltering oceans, and trailing streams 
That gleam where the dusky valleys lie." 



DWELL in a beautiful land- 
On an island than Eden more fair, 

Where storm clouds ne'er darken the day, 
Nor pestilence poisons the air. 

There are bowers of purple and gold, 

Where the birds sing their sweetest for me, 

And magical beauties untold, 
Adorn my dear isle of the sea. 

I've a palace of marble and pearl, 
With terraces glittering white. 

Mid a grove of the orange and lime, 
And fountains that dance in the light; 

Near a lake, where the sky overhead 
Is reflected in azure below, 

Whose margin is soft to my tread- 
Where the myrtle and columbine grow. 

The vines bend there emerald heads 

To receive the most kiss of the wave. 
While blushingly watches the rose 

From the shore that the bright waters lave. 
The zephyrs that sport with the flowers, 

Are laden with many a sweet; 
And trippingly glide by the hours, 

Where I dwell in my sylvan retreat. 



When weary with heart-aching cares- 

When sorrow and heaviness come, 
I step in my light fairy barge, 

And hie to my bright island home. 
Loved voices will welcome me there, 

And lift the dark pall from my heart. 
Fond hope take the place of despair. 

And Peace her soft sunlight impart, 

"Where, do you ask, is this land 

That in beauty an Eden outvies ? 
It exists in the realm of my dreams — 

In the ocean of fancy it lies. 
Shut out, far away, from the Real, 

From the world and its harassing strife. 
I live in the blissful ideal, 

And cull the dream roses of life. 



